Whistleblower's letter on Bill C-51, health TYRANNY

Open Letter to Prime Minister Harper -- Re Bills C51&52, Helke Ferrie


KOS LOGO and address
June 15, 2008

793'rd
anniversary of the Magna Carta



The Right Honorable Stephen Harper
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A2

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

The Globe & Mail has on its masthead the following statement made by an 18'th century British political thinker known only by his nom de plume, Junius: "The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures." It is in this spirit that I am writing to you about the proposed bills C-51 and C-52. Nobody knows who Junius was; he might have been anybody, as indeed I am – just a Canadian who is exceedingly alarmed and cannot help but feel protective towards this great nation in the face of a public health emergency.

These two bills not only dramatically fail to address this crisis in public.

When a government falls into error, only the governed can correct that. It is my view, that in a parliamentary democracy it is the duty of the citizen is to pay careful attention to government and to offer correction to government policy when necessary – but to do so only if able to provide supporting evidence to show that government health, but actually threaten to increase this emergency to unmanageable levels, if passed. I am approaching your government in the spirit of Junius to advise against arbitrary measures and also to express clear resistance to such arbitrariness is in error. In a democracy we neither want government to shoot off their mouths, nor should we be allowed to do so either.

This book provides, I hope, that most significant supporting evidence for the contention that C-51 and C-52 are totally unacceptable, are impossible to amend, and must be withdrawn.

I should introduce myself first: For the past twelve years I have been researching medical politics and writing for various venues on a monthly basis. I also occasionally publish books written mostly by medical professionals who are especially concerned about environmental and nutritional medicine. This summer I am releasing Dr. Shiv Chopra's memoirs. Entitled Corrupt to the Core - Memoirs of a Health Canada Whistleblower . It is introduced by MP Paul Dewar (NDP), lawyer David Yazbeck, and three recipients of the Swedish Right Livelihood Award, namely public health scholar and oncologist Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, physicist Dr. Vandana Shiva, and Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians. Dr. Chopra's book covers his four decades as a Health Canada regulator during which he determinedly fought to uphold the Food and Drugs Act and follow its Regulations, in order to protect the Canadian people from unsafe drugs.

As you will recall, he and his colleagues, Drs. Margaret Haydon and Gerard Lambert, managed to have that Act obeyed, against all political odds, so as to prevent bovine growth hormone (rBST – a carcinogen) from being passed in our food supply. For that service to the public, as you will also recall, they were fired in 2004 on grounds of insubordination by your predecessor, then Prime Minister Paul Martin.

At that time, given your campaign promises of transparency and accountability, many of us, myself included, had hoped and actually expected that you would take the necessary steps to reinstate these scientists and support them in their exercise of due diligence on behalf of public health. However, on May 20'th this year, the Canadian Association of Journalists listed you as the top nominee for this year's Code of Silence Award for "having muzzled cabinet ministers, civil servants, and particularly professional scientists." Then you closed the data base for freedom- of-information inquiries, a research tool meant to help Canadians keep their governments accountable and transparent.

Most governments, once elected in sufficient numbers to form a government, only partly fulfill their campaign promises. In general, the electorate is as forgiving of the human inconsistencies in our friends and loved ones as they are of broken government promises. However, when the inconsistencies become too overwhelming, the relationship breaks down, usually irreparably, and the injured party resorts instinctively to self-defense. We may have reached that point.

These glaring inconsistencies between promise and action in your administration make it hard to trust the stated intent of bills C-51 and C-52; they are not difficult to understand. If passed into law, they would pose a threat to public health, the rule of law, and the freedom of scientific research. Both bills, to my mind, display an equally unparalleled disregard for the spirit, and most probably also the letter, of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The public has been repeatedly told that the government has only good intentions with regard to C-51 and C-52. Now, it seems to me that the contract between a people and its government cannot possibly ever be carried out on the basis of trust. Laws are guarantees.

Pronouncements of intent mean literally nothing.

The most recent attempt at calming down the tens of thousands of angry Canadians who have made themselves heard since April 8, has been a proposal to amend C-51; this was presented by the Honorable Tony Clement on June 9, 2008. Those amendments appear to be of dubious parliamentary legality, as pointed out by MPs Marlene Jennings in her e-mails, and as was stated in the House by MP Robert Thibault who suggested this was possibly Contempt of Parliament. MP Jennings wrote: "I've been an MP eleven years. It is the first time that I see such a thing! Normally, the government does not table amendments at committee stage, only after all the experts and witnesses have been heard."

Worst of all, Health Canada arranged for so-called "stakeholder" meetings across the country to reassure outraged citizens about C-51; this exercise bordered on the absurd: people were invited to meet with representatives from the largest drug companies, who were co-sponsoring most of these events, in order to discuss public concerns about a government bill which is supposed to regulate those very companies. Just how scary can it get?

We are in the midst of a public health crisis caused by food contaminated with health hazards such as pesticides, genetically engineered food plants that we now know promote systemic disease, and pharmaceutical drugs based on fraudulent science and therefore having become the leading cause of death. This assertion is supported by verifiable, non-industry funded science from around the world - I was as amazed and shocked to discover this as everybody else.

I myself used to wonder if the "natural health crowd" was just a bunch of treehuggers , but it turns out the are all mainstream scientists, some even Nobel laureates, and many are outraged refugee scientists from the genetic engineering industry itself. Much of the evidence is presented in this book.

With regard to pharmaceutical drugs being the leading cause of death, this has been made public by the premier medical institutions in the world and since 1998 has been the subject of many research projects published in the world's "big five" medical journals, including the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association. In fact, this line of inquiry was first started, with the cooperation of the United States FDA, by Professor Bruce Pomerance of the University of Toronto. Ten years ago, he concluded that properly prescribed and correctly taken pharmaceutical drugs might be the fourth leading cause of death in North America. More recently, Johns Hopkins Medical School refined this research, largely due to the increasing death statistics which became available in the intervening years, so that now it is the leading cause of death, outpacing cancer and AIDS.

As reported in the CMAJ, in Canada, at least 23,000 people die every year from pharmaceutical drug-related problems; these are only the reported deaths. Both the FDA and Canadian experts believe the rate is much higher. Due to this constantly rising death toll, the CMAJ observed on January 4 and March 15, 2005, that Health Canada is not adequately monitoring the safety of marketed drugs and has "demonstrated a structural inability to do ongoing safety monitoring of new drugs and devices."

Unfortunately, bill C-51 does nothing to improve this situation because it doesn't even define safety, while the Food and Drugs Act, which supposedly requires "modernization", has very clear concepts of safety in its regulations - the very ones that allowed Dr. Chopra and his colleagues to identify those dangerous drugs they persistently opposed. The same is true for C-52, and both bills share the fact that they import into the regulation of foods, drugs, and hazardous products the wholly inappropriate concept of risk management instead of risk assessment. The difference between these two concepts is that the first assumes there will be a body count and tolerates some exposure to hazardous substances; the decisions to be made under such management have to do with how many bodies and how much hazardous contamination the government can comfortably get away with. Risk assessment, on the other hand, determines the level at which people are harmed – and then such substances must be banned.

Defining safety in both bills would result in a huge number of drugs and hazardous substances having to have their original marketing approval re-examined for purposes of assessment and potential withdrawal – as the European Union is doing now. Many would have to be recalled because the original approvals were not based on the available science and often granted under political pressure. In medicine, we even know with which ones to start the clean- up. The CMAJ told us so in their June 2, 2008 issue: they include especially the antipsychotics that Truehope so successfully replaced with safe natural products that also are so truly effective.

These and many other potent pharmaceuticals also end up in the water and are ingested by people for whom they were not prescribed – something C-52 does not even address. About 14 million emergency room visits take place in Canada annually only due to adverse drug events.

Given there are only roughly 30 million Canadians, this number is staggering and suggests that hundreds of thousands of people have more than one such experience per year.

It is my understanding, that government is mandated to manage health care with integrity.

Therefore, I was astounded when I read in The National Post on May 6'th, 2008, that your former communications director, Geoff Norquay, was directly involved with the lobbying efforts of pharmaceutical companies to restrict the availability of the far cheaper (and far safer because of proven post-marketing experience) generic drugs. I also find it hard to swallow that within a month after one of your close colleagues, Ken Boessenkool, registered as a lobbyist for Merck Frosst, your 2007 budget had $ 300 million allocated for their genital wart vaccine (marketed for cervical cancer) that has the highest rate of deaths and complications reported for any vaccine, namely Gardasil. This is very disturbing optics.

Not a single death is known so far to have been caused by a natural health product. One of the overheads I frequently show at lectures is a chart provided by the World Health Organization showing that the most dangerous thing one can do in an industrialized country is to be admitted to hospital, while the chance of being harmed or killed by a natural health product is the same as being hit by a meteor. What complicates this drug crisis further is the fact that pharmaceutical drugs are the source of enormous wealth and that Canada is one of the governments that has supported the increase of wealth from that source, not the decrease of the damage these products are causing .

Your policies appear are falling into that principal error Junius advised against; these two bills provide the evidence. That error is arbitrariness. It is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as: "Based solely on personal wishes, feelings, or perceptions rather than on objective facts, reasons, or principles."

Throughout C-51 and C-52, all sorts of enforcement provisions are relegated to Orders in Council – away from public scrutiny, unencumbered by messy parliamentary debate, and certainly free from probing questions from the press. Most surprising, and absolutely unacceptable, are those provisions that have to do with foreign governments and regulatory agencies – in which Canadians had no vote. I doubt this is legal. Unless Canadians read the Canada Gazette regularly, they would not even know that some deal has been struck with a foreign regulatory agency and that those foreign provisions have suddenly become law in Canada.

This is incomprehensible in view of your own publicly stated concern about Codex Alimentarius, for example, in 2003 when you were supporting MP James Lunney's bill C-420. Yet, as Prime Minister, I found on Health Canada's website that as of December 7 of last year, a "confidential" agreement already exists for such regulatory cross-Atlantic importation with the European Union and the European Medicine Agency. The only thing that seems to be still needed to make this all legal is the passage of C-51.

The Honorable Tony Clement's attempt at introducing some accountability into C-51 by changing "may" to "shall" in C-51's section 20.4, so now "the Minister shall establish, committees for seeking advice" on complex issues of science in medicine, insults every Canadians' intelligence . Unless those committees are independently picked, and unless such exercises are open to the public, and unless the results are debated in Parliament, this proposed amendment does not at all ensure that the same old cherry-picking of suitable "tobacco scientists" won't continue to happen: in the provisions in C-51 the industry is included among those the Minister may pick from for advisory committees. However, it is the industry that is to be regulated . In any case, who cares if "may" is now "shall", because none of the Order in Council provisions have been removed, as they should be, if any transparency and accountability is to be guaranteed to the public.

The assurance that the government wishes to introduce a separate definition for natural
health products, reported in the national press for the past few days, amounts to nothing at all in practice: natural health products are still part of the overall regulatory intent of bill C-51; the Natural Health Products Directorate of Health Canada did not incorporate the 53
Recommendations given by the Standing Committee on Health a decade ago, and C-51 is not correcting that blatant disregard of its own government advisers; all natural health products are still regulated as a "subcategory" of drugs and assessed within the drug model of approval, as the Minister himself has written in his many e-mails to Canadians; and Schedule A still stands prohibiting most diseases from being treated by natural health products (contrary to the mass of mainstream scientific evidence showing that they can); and the (sadly) most lucrative of all disease groups (depression, acute anxiety, including bi-polar disorder) was deliberately moved out of the category of diseases which may be treated with natural health products – even though none of them are Prozac-deficiencies and the Truehope clinical trials have proven that even the most severe mental health conditions are ultimately disorders of nutrient absorption and nutrient metabolization. Telling Canadians natural health products will be recognized as a special category of its own means nothing unless that category is on par with the pharmaceutical drug categories and entered into law as a choice patients can make – which is what about 70% of us want.

The entire damage-control exercise undertaken in the past couple of weeks leaves a very bad taste in the mouth and will inevitably cause the public anger to increase, once everybody has figured out that they have once again been had.

That brings me to the reasons provided both by the Honorable Tony Clement and the information found on Health Canada's website regarding the necessity for these bills. The examples given are of a batch of fluoridated toothpaste contaminated with some toxic chemical .

A simple, classic contamination event that was cleared up without difficulty under the existing law. Yet, the daily poisoning of people and the environment with fluoridation continues unchecked – despite the scientific evidence . There is nothing in C-52 that could even begin to deal with this problem, nor is fluoride listed among the substances to be banned – as it should, if science was heeded or, at the very least, the precautionary principle was applied.

Also mentioned were cases of alleged liver toxicity caused by a botanical remedy derived from black cohosh, and the contamination of some herbal product with the active ingredient in drugs that treat erectile dysfunction. Canadians are supposed to believe that this immense legislative exercise is justified and prompted by these tempests in a teapot. Given the ongoing disaster of hundreds of deaths per day from Health Canada-approved pharmaceutical drugs, and given the fact that almost every drug listed in the CPS has some level of liver toxicity associated with it, these examples are like having an emergency room full of people bleeding to death while the government attends to a nosebleed, as a doctor recently said at a rally in Toronto organized to protest C-51.

You may be interested to know that the information your Health Minister used to defend C-51 is problematic. He was apparently relying on reports now about 4 years old, still posted on Health Canada's website (the links provided for verification purposes are no longer accessible), and still not updated or substantiated. So, I went to the National Institutes of Health, whose entry on black cohosh was updated on January 16 of this year and therefore is somewhat definitive. It turns out, that the NIH is currently funding a double-blind placebo-controlled cross-over study on this botanical for treatment of menopausal symptoms. Furthermore, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends it as helpful and safe in their most recent consensus opinion, cited by the NIH. It is so safe, that it is considered a food and unregulated in the US. The alleged liver damage occurred in people who were on all sorts of drugs, including teenagers experimenting with hard drugs at the time of sustaining liver damage; five died in Canada and one in Canada, but the information on the circumstances can no longer be accessed.

In light of this information, it will be difficult to convince menopausal female Canadians, who are well aware of the risk of cancer and heart attack from standard hormone replacement therapy with synthetic drugs, that C-51 is needed to protect us from black cohosh.

As for yohimbine, it has indeed many properties in common with the active ingredient of Viagra (sildenafil), but the fact is that it was first nature that created aphrodisiacs, then drug companies made the synthetic analogs. Consequently, it is not surprising that the more likely story behind this otherwise unimportant contamination event is a potentially embarrassing federal case brought by Strauss Herbal Co. against Health Canada.

As for the references to toxic heavy metals, the current Food and Drugs Act is perfectly able to handle those types of emergencies and has done so in the past; heavy metals are known to be toxic since before even that act was written and have been one of the reasons public health legislation began in the 19'th century.

Finally, the explanation given that we must protect people against contaminated foreign foods, from China for example, is really a good case of the mote in Chinese eyes and the beam making vision impossible in Canadian eyes: if the government was truly guided by published science of verifiable integrity, it would be our food supply that should be cleaned up from pesticides, genetic and prion contamination and the like, so we could sell it to Europe, where they don't want our food products; they have even defied World Trade Organization court rulings, when ordered to import Canadian foods because they know much of our food products carry the risk of cancer, the potential of Mad Cow Disease, and may increase antibiotic resistance.

Thus, neither the Health Canada website, nor the communications that have so far come from the Honorable Tony Clement, have given Canadians any reasonable justification as to why we need our Food and Drugs Act urgently modernized. In contrast to the non-information coming from the Health Canada website and the Honorable Tony Clement's pronouncements, one of your own caucus' MPs, Dr. James Lunney, whom you strongly and publicly supported in 2003 when he brought forward bill C-420 – a bill which was informed by a radically different spirit and completely unlike C-51 – made some real sense when he spoke in the House on June 9.

He read into the record the statement made by the members of the 39'th International Congress on Nutritional Medicine which was then winding up in Vancouver. It was a resounding critique of the intent and purpose of C-51, all of which still applies after the attempts at damage control by the Ministry of Health. It would so much more reassuring if bill C-420 were brought back to life and you, too, would return to the principles that you stated in your letter of support at that time.
This now defunct bill was one of the main reasons Canadians gave you a hesitant chance at running this country. Much of what you said before you were elected had the full support of the public; most of what you have done since, has not. Bill C-51 also shows a remarkable disregard for the independence of scientific inquiry.

Even clinical trials would be subject to the Minister's arbitrary powers, both in agriculture and medicine. Possibly this is the most appalling part of both bills: the cavalier readiness to manage even science as if it was a commodity. This lack of respect for the necessary independence of science is coupled with an equally cavalier attitude to the courts, as best illustrated in the Truehope case.

In December 2007, almost two years after you took office, Health Canada proceeded to raise accusations against Truehope Nutritional Support Ltd as if no court order had been given by Justice G. M. Maegher of the Alberta Provincial Court. The order required Health Canada to back off totally and for Truehope to continue its clinical trials involving the treatment of extreme bi-polar disorder in some 3,000 patients, and this order was given under the Criminal Code of Canada; Health Canada failed to appeal it because there were no grounds for appeal.

What should have happened, following the July 28, 2006, judgment, is that Health Canada should have immediately cleared the requisite natural health products used in this trial, especially in view of the fact that the astonishingly successful results of this trial had already been, and are continuing to be, reported in the leading mainstream psychiatric journals.

Your government may go down in medical history as having stood in the way of one of the greatest medical discoveries – how to treat successfully one of the most expensive and difficult mental health condition that affects about 18 million North Americans and costs $ 4 billion in direct medical costs annually.

The sense I get is that there is a misunderstanding with regard to what – for the want of a better term – one calls "job description". A Prime Minister is not a CEO. Members of Parliament are not shareholders. Citizens and the scientific enterprise are not stake-holders.

Canada is not a terrain for prospectors seeking a fortune. Most importantly, whatever happens in our national home is established by the courts, not by a Cabinet that misunderstands itself as being a board of directors. If Canadians agreed with such changes to the very essence of government, changes to the Constitutions will have to be made first – by public consultation.

Canada is first and foremost the home of some 30 million people who do not wish to be used as means towards ends that their elected government decides upon and then merely announce these decisions as Orders in Council in the Canada Gazette. It is not the job of government to redefine citizens into customers for enterprises chosen by government.

Some 97% of us do not want to eat genetically engineered food. The Royal College stated in 2004 that on no issue in the history of public polling has there been such overwhelming consensus as on the public's rejection of genetically engineered foods. Therefore, why does your government not immediately proceed to pass bill C-510 and C-448?

More than 70% of us prefer medical therapies that have been developed by mainstream medicine from substances that cannot be patented and which do not carry the demonstrated risk of organ and systemic injury or death. So, why does the government not implement the 53 Recommendations of its own Standing Committee on Health?

Some 83% of us do not want to have our regulatory systems harmonized with those of the US and Mexico (or any other country or regulatory agency such as Codex) as proposed by the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). By what legal right or mandate do you support the harmonization of health care and health regulation with other countries and large corporations?

Parliament makes laws, not corporations. We did not elect those corporations and we are not even partners in this Security and Prosperity Partnership; in fact, we are deliberately excluded.

Following the February 23, 2007, SPP meeting in Ottawa, one of its members, Ron Covais of Lockheed Martin (the world's largest weapons manufacturer whose products are hardly good for anybody's health) told a reporter: "The guidance from the [government's] ministers was: 'Tell us what we need to do and we will make it happen.'… [explaining that] rather than going through the legislative process in any country, the Security and Prosperity Partnership must be implemented in incremental changes by executive agencies, bureaucrats and regulators. 'We've decided not to recommend any things that require legislative changes, because we won't get anywhere.'"

I certainly hope they won't! Before corporations make our parliament buildings into a five-star hotel, the Charter will have to disappear, doctors have to be stopped from free and independent scientific inquiry, and some 30 million of us will have to become zombies through enforced intake of antidepressant drugs. I certainly don't think that will happen either.

Since bill C-51 does nothing for medicine and C-52 does nothing for the environment and neither protects us against known health hazards, it is difficult not to conclude that bills C-51 and C-52 are instruments for those "incremental changes" corporations want for their own purposes.

However, there is that major difficulty that stands in the way like a mountain: the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is the contract the people of Canada have with you. It spells out the terms of a civilized relationship.

Yours respectfully,

Helke Ferrie

KOS Publishing Inc.

UN summit to prevent mass starvation

Leslie says:

I wonder what good the summit will reallly do apart from wardoff starvation from pot bellied politicians and corperations. I see a side effect not yet mentioned once in anyhting I have read of this plight. The situation created by Monsanto in creating seeds which are viable just once and do not produce viable seed. This will lead to further poverty and starvation as peple can no longer afford the starter seeds. These could be distributed by the storms and end up takin gover crop land which will no longer give the seed and we will be all in the pooper.

World leaders will meet in Rome next week to discuss ways of preventing mass starvation and instability because of soaring food prices.

The summit, which is to be hosted by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, is expected to hear arguments for the establishment of a global food fund and see pledges of food aid from wealthy countries to poor nations to ward off the food shortages.

Leader will also discuss the increased production of biofuels, which is blamed for a reduction in arable land available for food production, as farmers turn to growing crops for fuel. New international guidelines on biofuel production are expected to be discussed.

Britain is expected to argue for aid in the form of fertilisers and seeds to be distributed in time for planting for next season.

"Failure to reach a deal would hit the poorest hard. Literally tens of millions of people will be denied a chance to break out of poverty," Prime Minister Gordon Brown reportedly said last night.

The summit comes as food shortages and send the cost of food soaring sparking unrest in nations such as Haiti, Cameroon, Niger and Egypt, where riots have broken out. Food shortages and the related political instability are seen by some as a more pressing long-term challenges than terrorism.

The food price spike comes as China and India, which have seen unprecedented increases in wealth, display a growing appetite for meat - a food which is more expensive to produce than traditional staples such as rice.

Important article on Monsanto!! A NUST READ

Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear

Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination.

by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele May 2008

No thanks: An anti-Monsanto crop circle made by farmers and volunteers in the Philippines. By Melvyn Calderon/Greenpeace HO/A.P. Images.

Gary Rinehart clearly remembers the summer day in 2002 when the stranger walked in and issued his threat. Rinehart was behind the counter of the Square Deal, his “old-time country store,” as he calls it, on the fading town square of Eagleville, Missouri, a tiny farm community 100 miles north of Kansas City.

The Square Deal is a fixture in Eagleville, a place where farmers and townspeople can go for lightbulbs, greeting cards, hunting gear, ice cream, aspirin, and dozens of other small items without having to drive to a big-box store in Bethany, the county seat, 15 miles down Interstate 35.

Everyone knows Rinehart, who was born and raised in the area and runs one of Eagleville’s few surviving businesses. The stranger came up to the counter and asked for him by name.

“Well, that’s me,” said Rinehart.

As Rinehart would recall, the man began verbally attacking him, saying he had proof that Rinehart had planted Monsanto’s genetically modified (G.M.) soybeans in violation of the company’s patent. Better come clean and settle with Monsanto, Rinehart says the man told him—or face the consequences.

Rinehart was incredulous, listening to the words as puzzled customers and employees looked on. Like many others in rural America, Rinehart knew of Monsanto’s fierce reputation for enforcing its patents and suing anyone who allegedly violated them. But Rinehart wasn’t a farmer. He wasn’t a seed dealer. He hadn’t planted any seeds or sold any seeds. He owned a small—a really small—country store in a town of 350 people. He was angry that somebody could just barge into the store and embarrass him in front of everyone. “It made me and my business look bad,” he says. Rinehart says he told the intruder, “You got the wrong guy.”

When the stranger persisted, Rinehart showed him the door. On the way out the man kept making threats. Rinehart says he can’t remember the exact words, but they were to the effect of: “Monsanto is big. You can’t win. We will get you. You will pay.”

Scenes like this are playing out in many parts of rural America these days as Monsanto goes after farmers, farmers’ co-ops, seed dealers—anyone it suspects may have infringed its patents of genetically modified seeds. As interviews and reams of court documents reveal, Monsanto relies on a shadowy army of private investigators and agents in the American heartland to strike fear into farm country. They fan out into fields and farm towns, where they secretly videotape and photograph farmers, store owners, and co-ops; infiltrate community meetings; and gather information from informants about farming activities. Farmers say that some Monsanto agents pretend to be surveyors. Others confront farmers on their land and try to pressure them to sign papers giving Monsanto access to their private records. Farmers call them the “seed police” and use words such as “Gestapo” and “Mafia” to describe their tactics.

When asked about these practices, Monsanto declined to comment specifically, other than to say that the company is simply protecting its patents. “Monsanto spends more than $2 million a day in research to identify, test, develop and bring to market innovative new seeds and technologies that benefit farmers,” Monsanto spokesman Darren Wallis wrote in an e-mailed letter to Vanity Fair. “One tool in protecting this investment is patenting our discoveries and, if necessary, legally defending those patents against those who might choose to infringe upon them.” Wallis said that, while the vast majority of farmers and seed dealers follow the licensing agreements, “a tiny fraction” do not, and that Monsanto is obligated to those who do abide by its rules to enforce its patent rights on those who “reap the benefits of the technology without paying for its use.” He said only a small number of cases ever go to trial.

Some compare Monsanto’s hard-line approach to Microsoft’s zealous efforts to protect its software from pirates. At least with Microsoft the buyer of a program can use it over and over again. But farmers who buy Monsanto’s seeds can’t even do that.

The Control of Nature

For centuries—millennia—farmers have saved seeds from season to season: they planted in the spring, harvested in the fall, then reclaimed and cleaned the seeds over the winter for re-planting the next spring. Monsanto has turned this ancient practice on its head.

Monsanto developed G.M. seeds that would resist its own herbicide, Roundup, offering farmers a convenient way to spray fields with weed killer without affecting crops. Monsanto then patented the seeds. For nearly all of its history the United States Patent and Trademark Office had refused to grant patents on seeds, viewing them as life-forms with too many variables to be patented. “It’s not like describing a widget,” says Joseph Mendelson III, the legal director of the Center for Food Safety, which has tracked Monsanto’s activities in rural America for years.

Indeed not. But in 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court, in a five-to-four decision, turned seeds into widgets, laying the groundwork for a handful of corporations to begin taking control of the world’s food supply. In its decision, the court extended patent law to cover “a live human-made microorganism.” In this case, the organism wasn’t even a seed. Rather, it was a Pseudomonas bacterium developed by a General Electric scientist to clean up oil spills. But the precedent was set, and Monsanto took advantage of it. Since the 1980s, Monsanto has become the world leader in genetic modification of seeds and has won 674 biotechnology patents, more than any other company, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

Farmers who buy Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready seeds are required to sign an agreement promising not to save the seed produced after each harvest for re-planting, or to sell the seed to other farmers. This means that farmers must buy new seed every year. Those increased sales, coupled with ballooning sales of its Roundup weed killer, have been a bonanza for Monsanto.

This radical departure from age-old practice has created turmoil in farm country. Some farmers don’t fully understand that they aren’t supposed to save Monsanto’s seeds for next year’s planting. Others do, but ignore the stipulation rather than throw away a perfectly usable product. Still others say that they don’t use Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds, but seeds have been blown into their fields by wind or deposited by birds. It’s certainly easy for G.M. seeds to get mixed in with traditional varieties when seeds are cleaned by commercial dealers for re-planting. The seeds look identical; only a laboratory analysis can show the difference. Even if a farmer doesn’t buy G.M. seeds and doesn’t want them on his land, it’s a safe bet he’ll get a visit from Monsanto’s seed police if crops grown from G.M. seeds are discovered in his fields.

Most Americans know Monsanto because of what it sells to put on our lawns— the ubiquitous weed killer Roundup. What they may not know is that the company now profoundly influences—and one day may virtually control—what we put on our tables. For most of its history Monsanto was a chemical giant, producing some of the most toxic substances ever created, residues from which have left us with some of the most polluted sites on earth. Yet in a little more than a decade, the company has sought to shed its polluted past and morph into something much different and more far-reaching—an “agricultural company” dedicated to making the world “a better place for future generations.” Still, more than one Web log claims to see similarities between Monsanto and the fictional company “U-North” in the movie Michael Clayton, an agribusiness giant accused in a multibillion-dollar lawsuit of selling an herbicide that causes cancer.

The rest is at:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805

Exposed: the great GM crops myth

Published on Sunday, May 04, 2008.

Source: The Independent

Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.

The study – carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain belt – has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields.

Professor Barney Gordon, of the university's department of agronomy, said he started the research – reported in the journal Better Crops – because many farmers who had changed over to the GM crop had "noticed that yields are not as high as expected even under optimal conditions". He added: "People were asking the question 'how come I don't get as high a yield as I used to?'"

He grew a Monsanto GM soybean and an almost identical conventional variety in the same field. The modified crop produced only 70 bushels of grain per acre, compared with 77 bushels from the non-GM one.

The GM crop – engineered to resist Monsanto's own weedkiller, Roundup – recovered only when he added extra manganese, leading to suggestions that the modification hindered the crop's take-up of the essential element from the soil. Even with the addition it brought the GM soya's yield to equal that of the conventional one, rather than surpassing it.

The new study confirms earlier research at the University of Nebraska, which found that another Monsanto GM soya produced 6 per cent less than its closest conventional relative, and 11 per cent less than the best non-GM soya available.

The Nebraska study suggested that two factors are at work. First, it takes time to modify a plant and, while this is being done, better conventional ones are being developed. This is acknowledged even by the fervently pro-GM US Department of Agriculture, which has admitted that the time lag could lead to a "decrease" in yields.

But the fact that GM crops did worse than their near-identical non-GM counterparts suggest that a second factor is also at work, and that the very process of modification depresses productivity. The new Kansas study both confirms this and suggests how it is happening.

A similar situation seems to have happened with GM cotton in the US, where the total US crop declined even as GM technology took over. (See graphic above.)

Monsanto said yesterday that it was surprised by the extent of the decline found by the Kansas study, but not by the fact that the yields had dropped. It said that the soya had not been engineered to increase yields, and that it was now developing one that would.

Critics doubt whether the company will achieve this, saying that it requires more complex modification. And Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington – and who was one of the first to predict the current food crisis – said that the physiology of plants was now reaching the limits of the productivity that could be achieved.

A former champion crop grower himself, he drew the comparison with human runners. Since Roger Bannister ran the first four-minute mile more than 50 years ago, the best time has improved only modestly . "Despite all the advances in training, no one contemplates a three-minute mile."

Andrew Fox

Last week the biggest study of its kind ever conducted - the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development - concluded that GM was not the answer to world hunger

Professor Bob Watson, the director of the study and chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when asked if GM could solve world hunger, said: "The simple answer is no."

food is medicine.

simple.

its primary purpose(s) is/are to ideally enhance, and at least preserve our physical->mental->spiritual well being.

after taking x billion years to arrive at her current state, man seeks to circumvent nature, by removing the key ingredients that preserve sound biological functioning. ie; the ability to germinate/recreate, which is at the root of all life, inhalation/intake, exhalation/excretion processes.

puhlease!

other realities provide monsanto et al current agenda for food production. ie: the rest of the world is waking up, no longer in slumber. the need to control their basic needs is at the root of their 'cause'

There will always be a trade off between a good trait that reduces the cost of production and or chemical input, and ultimate yield. But in the presence of that disease on a conventional variety, the yield would be significantly reduced to below the cost of production.
Wageningen University in the Netherlands has isolated a gene in rice that allows the plant to continue to grow when under drought stress. Not only that, but these plants also grew and prospered in saline conditions. In a world that is undergoing climatic shift, and the resulting pressure on fresh water, these are desirable traits to help feed the worlds increasing population.
That is what GM crops can do, not “just” increase yield

zeitgeistmovie.com -- see also prisonplanet.com and alex jones' "endgame" movie. all cover exactly this issue in depth. do it now or die like fools.

Posted by alex jones | 25.04.08, 05:51 GMT

David Rockefeller (CFR founder), page 405 of his 2002 book Memoirs: "Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it." ISBN-13: 978-0812969733

This article is so dumb!

Of course a plant designed to resist a herbicide will produce less under the same conditions!

Otherwise it is manipulating the laws of physics!

The plant is having to produce extra proteins to deal with the Chemical, thus it has less enery for growth.

I had always suspected that the "real" advantage of GM crops was that the growers would always have to go back to the "rights owner" e.g. Monsanto, for more seed and supplies for each new crop. If this were true could there be some "connection" between the US government support of GM development, and lobbyists for Monsanto and "friends"?
Am I being too cynical, or forgetting any other beneficiaries?

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Hey two words SONIC BLOOM. Dan Carlson created it years ago and there are now hundreds of world records being broken with NON-GMO plants. Its organic and it works. Try 15 ft tall corn with 3-5 ears per stalk (most over 12" long) and nutritious to boot. I agree there should be arrests made of these MONSATAN people. Arrests and trials

It has been pointed out that the aim of the genetic modification in this case was not to increase yields. But this prompts the question: Why not? That's the most obvious thing to increase for a positive economic impact. I think the answer is that Monsanto were not able to achieve this so far and won't necessarily do so in the future.

This chapter from an excellent book called Natural Capitalism will put you in a good mindset to see the massive flaws in genetic engineering of crops.
http://www.natcap.org/images/other/NCchapter10.pdf

In the U.S.A, the GM producer lobbied very strongly to prevent mention on food content labels. They won and effectively took over the entire food production chain, without too much notice, beyond their incessant P.R. declaration about how "We're feeding the world!"

Most Americans don't know they're on a GM diet now every day. Not just fruit and vegetables... poultry and cattle are fattened on GM sugar corn and other grains. You can not avoid eating GM anywhere in the States now unless you do considerable research and make an enormous effort to buy normal unadulterated food.

The GM producer now wants the entire European market, but fortunately we do have the European Union. Monsanto, in tandem with American trade origansations, fight hard and dirty to cram it down our throats. Especially to prevent us, European consumers, the right to be informed on a package label. Or require further study of long range effects.

This by the same company which brought the world Agent Orange...

A look at what technology may do for the future

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Industrial_Society_and_Its_Future#Introduction


In these people's quest for money and power they're f%^$ing up the whole world and the balance of nature that has slowly evolved to perfection over millions of years. Yeah, you're smarter than God. Idiots. These educated fools, with their big degrees and their learned intelligence are an absolute danger to mankind. And it's a shame they didn't learn squat about ethics or humanity.
You dummies missed the point of it all.
It's too bad we can't genetically modify stupid people. If we could just cross half these people with a rock we'd be doing a LOT better. You GM jenioushes should try to figure that one out instead.

When the bees are gone these dummies might just get a clue.

Yes, I agree to this fully. Thank God now we have found GM is bad The Hibrid and GM produced seeds cant be sown again, and the Farmers are made slaves of the Multi nationals who produce Cross bred seeds and saplings.
The real Prosperity & Sufficency comes from the law of God
from the Bible.
GEN 1:11 Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

GE 1:29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.

Note the word "Seed" how many times it is repeated. Here seed means " Natural Reproduction System" Let us come back to our senses. In God's Economy Seeds are free with the fruit

"Early in 1998, with permission from the Rowett Research Institute, Árpád Pusztai agreed to be interviewed about his research for a television news program. In the short clip aired on the program he said that his findings led him to believe that more research was needed on the health impacts of foods from genetically modified crops and that he would be reluctant to eat GM foods until more was known. Within days, Pusztai was suspended from his job and forbidden to speak about his work to anyone in the press. A few months later he was fired, and not long after his wife and co-researcher was also forced out of her senior position at the research institute. The other study collaborator, Dr. Stanley W. B. Ewen, retained his position at the University of Aberdeen until 2001, when he retired. In Andrew Rowell’s book Don’t Worry (It’s Safe to Eat) Ewen says that the climate in his department became cool after publication of the study results and influenced his choice to retire early."

I can't wait to have Prof. Pusztai's research corroborated by some courageous researcher, as well. Monsanto has lied and lied and lied.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/business/21crop.html?hp

This article appeared the same day, who is writing all the propaganda and paying for it?

Why would politicians and giant corporations spend so much money on propaganda in less it was to control the world's food Supply and that is exactly what this is about an attempt to control production of food.

You must buy the seed from them and they will control every aspect of food growth and production.

Very interesting story. Nice to see the biotech industry propaganda exposed. Keith says it's "not a secret" "that many first generation GM crops have reduced yields." On the contrary, the biotech companies and their front groups have invested millions to promote the "increased yield" myth and it's been almost universally accepted. For one of Dr. Gordon's papers, see: http://www.ppi-ppic.org/ppiweb/bcrops.nsf/$webindex/70ABDB50A75463F085257394001B157F/$file/07-4p12.pdf.
Another biotech industry myth (i.e. lie) that needs exposing relates to pesticide use. 81% of global GM crop area is planted to pesticide-promoting herbicide-tolerant crops, chiefly the Roundup Ready crops that Dr. Gordon studied. This has led to an INCREASE in herbicide use. See http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/WhoBenefitsPR2_13_08.cfm which provides a link to a report that proves this, based on USDA data.

- Some Monsanto research -

Monsanto Agrees to Purchase Cargill International Seed Operations In Central And Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa

    ST. LOUIS, June 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Monsanto Company (NYSE: MTC) and

Cargill, Incorporated, announced today that they have signed a definitive

agreement for Monsanto to purchase Cargill's international seed operations in

Central and Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa for $1.4 billion.

  The acquisition includes seed research, production and testing facilities

in 24 countries and sales and distribution operations in 51 countries in the

five regions.  Cargill's international seed businesses specialize in the

development and marketing of corn, sunflower and rapeseed seeds and also

market soybean, alfalfa, sorghum, wheat and hybrid rice seed in these markets.

  The acquisition does not include Cargill's seed operations in the United

States and Canada or Cargill Agricultural Merchants in the United Kingdom.

  "The potential for our existing biotechnology traits outside North America

is roughly double the acreage potential within North America.  The Cargill

international seed businesses give us quicker access to these global markets.

We can accelerate commercialization through established distribution channels

that will bring these and our future agronomic and quality traits to more

farmers around the world in the varieties they want to grow," said Monsanto

President Hendrik A. Verfaillie.

  "The biotechnology revolution is rapidly changing the international seed

industry, and Monsanto has been a key player in this arena," said Ernest S.

Micek, Cargill chairman and chief executive officer.  "This agreement combines

Cargill's excellent germplasm and international research, marketing and

distribution network with Monsanto's leadership in biotechnology."

  Monsanto and Cargill expect that Cargill businesses in Central and Latin

America, Europe, Asia and Africa will continue to market Cargill seeds.

  Cargill is a leading global producer of tropical corn seed and germplasm

with significant sales in the Central and Latin American, Asian and African

markets.  It has a leading position in oilseeds globally and is one of the few

seed companies with a long-standing presence in Asia and Central and Latin

America.  Its international seed business employs approximately 2,200 people.

  The sale of Cargill's seed businesses in Central and Latin America,

Europe, Asia and Africa follows an earlier agreement between Monsanto and

Cargill to form a global joint venture to create and market products improved

through biotechnology for the grain processing and animal feed markets.  In

addition to this initial agreement, Monsanto and Cargill are exploring future

opportunities to expand their partnership into other areas of agriculture and

food.

  Monsanto is a life sciences company, committed to finding solutions to the

growing global needs for food and health by applying advanced bioscience and

biotechnology to agriculture, nutrition and health.  It makes and manufactures

high-value agricultural products, pharmaceuticals and food ingredients.

  Cargill, based in Minneapolis, Minn., is an international marketer,

processor and distributor of agricultural, food, financial and industrial

products with nearly 79,000 employees in more than 1,000 locations in 72

countries and with business activities in 100 more.

SOURCE Monsanto Company - 1998

Monsanto profit nearly triples in 1st quarter, boosts outlook, shares jump

The Associated Press

Published: January 3, 2008

ST. LOUIS: Monsanto Co. reported Thursday that its first-quarter earnings nearly tripled because of surprisingly strong herbicide and seed sales in Latin America. It boosted its earnings forecast for the year, sending its shares up by 8.5 percent.

The world's biggest seed company earned $256 million (€173.52 million), or 46 cents per share, during the first fiscal quarter ended Nov. 30 — almost triple its profit of $90 million (€61 million), or 16 cents per share, during the same period last year.

Revenue during the first quarter surged 36 percent to $2.1 billion (€1.42 billion), from $1.54 billion (€1.04 billion) in the prior-year period.

The results beat expectations on Wall Street, where analysts had predicted a profit of 35 cents per share on revenue of $1.87 billion (€1.27 billion), according to a poll by Thomson Financial.

Monsanto's stock rose $9.45 (€6.41), or 8.5 percent, to $120.92 (€81.96) Thursday after rising to a 52-week high of $123 (€83.37) in earlier trading. Its shares have traded as low as $49.10 (€33.28) over the past year.

Today in Business with Reuters

Aging baby boomers stoke growth in industry for 'brain exercise'

Microsoft and Yahoo are said to resume talks

U.S. sheds fewer jobs than expected

Unexpectedly strong Latin American sales of the herbicide Roundup caused Monsanto to increase its year-end profit forecast to between $2.50 (€1.69) to $2.60 (€1.76) a share from between $2.20 (€1.49) to $2.40 (€1.63) a share.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expect Monsanto to deliver profits of $2.59 (€1.76) per share this year, near the high end of Monsanto's new guidance.

CEO Hugh Grant said he was impressed with the jump in Roundup sales, but the company still plans to reap most of its future profit growth from developing new genetically engineered seeds.

"While we're delighted with the work of the Roundup teams globally, our success in seeds and traits will ultimately determine how we meet our 2008 commitments and our 2012 targets," Grant told analysts during a conference call Thursday morning.

Rising sales of Roundup in Brazil and Argentina mean the herbicide will deliver roughly $1 billion (€0.68 billion) in gross profit by the end of the year, up from the $950 million (€643.94 million) the company estimated just over a month ago, said Chief Financial Officer Terrell Crews.

The company said total seed and genomics sales rose to $836 million (€566.66 million) from $680 million (€460.92 million) in the year-ago quarter. Agricultural sales rose to $1.26 billion (€0.85 billion) from $859 million (€582.25 million) a year ago.

The World According to Monsanto back online (for now)

The World According to Monsanto

The World According to Monsanto - part 2
The World According to Monsanto - part 3
The World According to Monsanto - part 4
The World According to Monsanto - part 5
The World According to Monsanto - part 6
The World According to Monsanto - part 7
The World According to Monsanto - part 8
The World According to Monsanto - part 9
The World According to Monsanto - part 10
The World According to Monsanto - part 11
The World According to Monsanto - part 12

A

On March 11 a new documentary was aired on French television (ARTE – French-German cultural tv channel) by French journalist and film maker Marie-Monique Robin, The World According to Monsanto - A documentary that Americans won't ever see.

The gigantic biotech corporation Monsanto is threatening to destroy the agricultural biodiversity which has served mankind for thousands of years.

700 mb bittorrent download here

How to Order "The World According to Monsanto/Le Monde Selon Monsanto"

• Organic Consumers Association
  Straight to the Source
  
  

Everyone in the organic and anti-GMO movement has been raving about the film "Le Monde Selon Monsanto/The World According to Monsanto," by Marie-Monique Robin.

But recently it was taken off of YouTube and Google Video with the explanation that the Film Board of Canada's copyright was being violated. Anybody feel kind of funny about that?

Anyway, sites keep popping up where you can watch the film, sometimes whole, sometimes in pieces. The latest place to view the film is here, but this might not last too long.

In order to not break any laws, and to support the film's makers, the best way to get to see this film is to order it. And here's how:

Click here to visit ARTE Boutique, a French website. This is the only place to buy this film. This website is in French and you will be ordering in Euros. The film costs 14,99 euros, or around $22. This seems a little daunting if you don't know how to speak French, but it's really not too hard.

Once you have found the film on this site, click on the button that says "Ajouter au Panier." This means the same as "Add to Cart" on English-speaking websites. This will take you to your shopping cart. You will have to choose the country you want it delivered to. "Etats-Unis" is United States. "Royaume-Uni" is United Kingdom. Then you must click the button that says "Terminer ma Commande" for checkout.

This takes you to another page. You are most likely a new customer on this site, so select "Je suis un nouveau client" and hit the button "m'inscrire."

This will take you to a registration page. This is pretty similar to an English-language website, so you can figure it out pretty easy.

"Nom" means name, specifically your last name. "Prenom" is your first name. "Votre courriel" is your email. "Mot de passe" is your password, and you have to confirm both. Everything else should be pretty self-explanatory.

"Adresse de Facturation" is your billing address. "Adresse de Livraison" is delivery address.

You probably don't want to subscribe to their newsletters unless you know French, so don't check the boxes at the bottom of the page.

The next page will be where you enter your credit card information.

Good luck! This may seem like a lot of work to buy a film, but we assure you, it is completely worth it. This film is highly educational, and showcases many of the hardworking folks in our movement who have been campaigning for years against Monsanto. The OCA isn't specifically mentioned, but every time Marie-Monique does an internet search we are listed in the results she is finding because we have such a huge compilation of articles on our website.

Peak Civilization and the Winter of our Disconnect: Carolyn Baker

PEAK CIVILIZATION AND THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONNECT, By Carolyn Baker

Thursday, 24 April 2008

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring. ~George Santayana~ The appearance of springtime in North America may be more welcome this year than at anytime in recent history. The winter has been long, cold, and dreary-particularly in the Rust Belt where the devastations of housing foreclosures, unemployment, and the resultant blight have left a trail of human misery and degradation not seen since the Great Depression. Ten percent of the population of Ohio now relies on food stamps while hordes of domestic animals abandoned in foreclosed homes endure long and grotesque deaths from starvation. For countless Americans across the nation, this winter has brought with it something far more distressing than brutal, bone-chilling temperatures-horrific, traumatic revelations that the American dream, neatly packaged and sold for decades, has become their worst possible nightmare. Should they happen to see on TV the guy from the Countrywide commercial greeting them with "Homeowners...", they are probably wondering why he hasn't been assassinated and at the very least wondering why Countrywide is still in business. Something is festering in the psyches of the formerly middle class of this nation-something far more ominous than burgeoning public assistance and food stamp applications or mushrooming meth labs. If the subprime mortgage massacre had occurred in a vacuum, the dirty little secret might have been kept a bit longer, but juxtaposing it with Peak Oil, skyrocketing food prices, wacky weather and debilitating droughts, not to mention proliferating pink slips, it daily becomes embarrassingly obvious that Jim Kunstler was spot-on when he uttered his infamous declaration in the documentary, "The End Of Suburbia" that "the entire suburban project is the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world." And yet during this "winter of disconnect" we have heard delusional economists and the President himself describe the current horrors in terms of "a soft patch" or the need to "ride this one out until things bounce back." And overall, the human race is virtually ignoring climate change and perseverating in the madness of the ethanol panacea. And speaking of insanity, Europe is rapidly returning to coal-fired power plants, while in China, coal "remains the major source of fuel for two billion people"-nightmare scenarios with respect to global warming and climate change. Meanwhile, Monsanto and other genocidal monsters of food and population control, tout ethanol as an energy panacea--the only tangible result of their hype being mass starvation and astronomical food prices. Or as a friend recently commented: Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food. The Four Seasons Of Civilization Duane Elgin, author of numerous books including Voluntary Simplicity, postulated fifteen years ago that civilizations evolve through specific stages which ironically follow the shape of a bell curve, similar to the Peak Oil curve, in their development and to which Elgin refers as the "four seasons" of growth. This was long before the bell curve of Peak Oil was familiar to many other individuals besides M. King Hubbert, father of the Peak Oil theory, who died four years before Elgin's book was published. According to Elgin, Stage I of the development of a civilization, "Springtime" is characterized by high growth and an era of faith in future potential. During springtime, there is little bureaucratic complexity, and activities are largely self-regulating. Stage II or "Summer", is an era of reason where social consensus begins to weaken and bureaucratic complexity increases with less self-regulation and more external regulation. "Autumn" follows, ushering in an era of cynicism where consensus weakens considerably, special interest groups surpass the power of a shared social purpose, and bureaucratic complexity mounts faster than the ability to effectively regulate. An era of despair characterizes Stage IV, "Winter", and the collapse of consensus is supplanted by conflicting social purposes. Bureaucratic mechanisms and their complexity become overwhelming, and society begins to break down. Elgin believes that three possible outcomes are likely to emerge from the breakdown of the system. One outcome is collapse as the biosphere is pushed beyond its limits and can no longer support the burden of humanity. Stagnation is another option, in which members of the system expend energy on simply maintaining the status quo. Revitalization is the most desirable option which results from a "period of intense communication and reconciliation that builds a working consensus around a sustainable pathway into the future." The author notes that we get collapse by "perpetuating the status quo and running the biosphere into ruin. We get stagnation when citizens are passive and rely on remote bureaucracies and technological solutions to handle a deteriorating local-to-global situation. We get revitalization only when we directly engage our predicament as individuals, families, communities, and nations." Although Elgin has presented the three options in this particular order, it is clear to me that the current civilization has long since passed through stagnation and is rapidly collapsing. In my opinion, while revitalization may have been possible decades ago when society's elite first learned of Peak Oil, climate change, and numerous renewable energy options, it is now possible only as a consequence of collapse for the simple reason that the progression of collapse has rendered voluntary revitalization extraordinarily problematic, if not impossible. Richard Heinberg's Peak Everything reveals unequivocally that virtually every resource on earth has reached or passed its peak of availability to the human race. Elgin's 1993 theory, however, offers a larger picture in which the likelihood that civilization itself has peaked and is on the downward side of the bell curve is logically plausible. The immediate "winter of our disconnect" (and discontent), described above, has been characterized by an astonishingly rapid unraveling of civilization which appears to accelerate with every passing day. The larger winter is not about specific events such as foreclosures, bankruptcies, food rationing in America, or melting glaciers, but rather the final evolutionary stage of civilization and its eventualities in which we now find ourselves embroiled. In other words, particular occurrences of unraveling indicate irrefutably that we have entered Peak Civilization. It is crucial, in my opinion, to comprehend Peak Civilization so that just as we understand that all of earth's resources have peaked which would prevent us from embracing the chimera of a "return to normalcy", we more astutely grasp the progression of human evolution and its implications in the macrocosm. That is to say that a clear understanding of Peak Oil prevents any rational human being from assuming that a return to cheap and abundant energy is feasible in his/her lifetime. Likewise, recognizing that civilization is in an irreversible trajectory of descent may assist us in conserving our valuable mental, emotional, and spiritual energy so that we do not expend it on phantoms of long-term revitalization. Past-Peak Elections-You Have No Government At this point it becomes necessary to distinguish between long-term and short-term revitalization. From my perspective, as stated above, collapse must occur in order for long-term revitalization to become possible, so attempting to prevent collapse also prevents one from honoring the current stage of civilization now unfolding. One example of understanding civilization's "winter" is to grasp that the only thing more futile than addressing energy depletion with ethanol use is the delusion that legitimate presidential elections actually occur in America offering valid choices between two genuinely opposing candidates who represent two distinct political parties and who are beyond domination, contamination, or exploitation by the transnational corporations that in fact manage the United States. Furthermore, to fully understand Peak Civilization is to understand that the federal government per se does not exist, but rather an elite corporate cartel engaged in the management of citizens-citizens who are now completely on their own in terms of their survival as the pseudo-government continues to implode. Moreover, the cartel's direct intent is the cessation of nation states to be supplanted by corporations and their subsidiaries. Therefore, the task before us is not to perpetuate the status quo by participating in the ersatz federal election debacle, but to, in the words of John Michael Greer "transition to a Third World lifestyle." I believe that any politician who suggests that we can do otherwise and survive as individuals or as a nation, may be committing a crime against humanity. Politicians and centralized systems are incapable of effecting meaningful change. Or as Greer states, "...getting the Federal government to do something constructive about the situation, for instance - [is] a waste of time. That sort of change isn't going to happen. It's not simply a matter of who's currently in power, although admittedly that doesn't help. The core of the problem is that even proposing changes on a scale that would do any good would be political suicide." Although nothing could be more unpalatable for the American public, transitioning to a Third-World lifestyle is precisely what it is being forced to do. And as Greer comments: There's no way to sugar-coat that very unpalatable reality. Fossil fuels made it possible for most people in the industrial world to have a lifestyle that doesn't depend on hard physical labor, and to wallow in a flood of mostly unnecessary consumer goods and services. As fossil fuels deplete, all that will inevitably go away. How many people would be willing to listen to such a suggestion? More to the point, how many people would vote for a politician or a party who proposed to bring on these changes deliberately, now, in order to prevent total disaster later on? What Peak Civilization Really Looks Like Peak Civilization by definition means the disappearance of public education, healthcare, government-issued currency, commercial food production, public access to regional water supplies, interstate commerce, the North American energy grid, and the very infrastructure of the United States. Yet one need not succumb to fatalism. While long-term revitalization cannot be realized now, its seeds can be and are being planted by the proliferation of vibrant relocalization movements erupting and evolving around the world, many of which have been spotlighted at the Truth To Power website. As Duane Elgin emphasizes: "A revitalizing society is a decentralizing society, with grassroots organizations that are numerous enough, have arisen soon enough, and are effective enough to provide a genuine alternative to more centralized bureaucracies." The first headlines of food rationing in America are buzzing across the internet as I write this article. They underscore the unequivocal reality that collapse is going to compel us to feed ourselves or quite simply, we will perish. I believe that food security is the most urgent, the most immediate issue to which we must attend at this moment of Peak Civilization. For months, this website has been informing readers about food storage and preservation and other aspects of preparedness. It is now time, if you have not already done so, to organize groups of citizens in your neighborhood, schools, churches, and community centers to plant and maintain gardens. In addition, collapse is compelling us to rapidly mobilize our neighborhoods and communities to not only accumulate our own supply of stored water but to organize citizens to work with local public water utilities to ensure that they remain public and are not privatized. Health care professionals reading these words need to consider offering local workshops on a regular basis teaching citizens how to treat injuries and illnesses in the absence of a viable healthcare system. Doctors, nurses, dentists, and all manner of medical personnel are likely to be overwhelmed with patients during and after the full-scale breakdown of the system when hospitals and clinics have closed and almost no one can afford health insurance. A recent CBS News video link emailed to subscribers recently by Truth To Power confirms the imminent, total collapse of America's healthcare system and reveals the extent to which anyone with the slightest bit of training in the field is likely to find her/himself inundated with throngs of sick people desperately seeking care. Seeds Of Revitalization Greer emphatically stresses that "The key to making sense of constructive action in a situation of impending industrial collapse is to look at the community, rather than the individual or society as a whole, as the basic unit." Those familiar with Greer's article, "The Coming Deindustrial Society", recall his three requirements for community: A community must have some degree of local organization; it must have a core of people who know how to live without fossil fuels; and it must have food and a production and distribution system for it. In a future article, Truth To Power will add another requirement, namely, the ability to communicate clearly and compassionately with other community members. Our challenge at this moment in history is to recognize and intentionally connect with the evolutionary season of winter in which Peak Civilization finds itself because as Duane Elgin admonishes us: "It is time to begin the next stage of our human journey." As I witness most of humanity's current "solutions" to its climate-energy-food-water-population-economic dilemmas, I see only myopic, psychotic strategies, and I have to ask myself whether or not it will be necessary for us to annihilate ourselves and the planet in order to transition into a more advanced evolutionary paradigm that will not permit the human race to ever again engage in anything like the current madness. Tragically, I see almost nothing that suggests otherwise. It is crucial that we comprehend that not only have we entered winter, but that that particular season is going to last a long time. As we navigate that winter, we are allowed our discontent, but we dare not permit ourselves to disconnect from current reality. Simultaneously, it is imperative that we hold a vision of revitalization and plant its seeds everywhere at the same time that we honor more the changing of the seasons than our addiction to springtime.

Last Updated ( Thursday, 24 April 2008 )