By Jeffrey M. Smith
May 19, 2009
Today, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) called on "Physicians to educate their patients, the medical community, and the public to avoid GM (genetically modified) foods when possible and provide educational materials concerning GM foods and health risks."[i] They called for a moratorium on GM foods, long-term independent studies, and labeling.
AAEM's position paper stated, "Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food," including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system. They conclude, "There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation," as defined by recognized scientific criteria. "The strength of association and consistency between GM foods and disease is confirmed in several animal studies."
More and more doctors are already prescribing GM-free diets. Dr. Amy Dean, a Michigan internal medicine specialist, and board member of AAEM says, "I strongly recommend patients eat strictly non-genetically modified foods." Ohio allergist Dr. John Boyles says "I used to test for soy allergies all the time, but now that soy is genetically engineered, it is so dangerous that I tell people never to eat it."
Dr. Jennifer Armstrong, President of AAEM, says, "Physicians are probably seeing the effects in their patients, but need to know how to ask the right questions." World renowned biologist Pushpa M. Bhargava goes one step further. After reviewing more than 600 scientific journals, he concludes that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are a major contributor to the sharply deteriorating health of Americans.
Pregnant women and babies at great risk
Among the population, biologist David Schubert of the Salk Institute warns that "children are the most likely to be adversely effected by toxins and other dietary problems" related to GM foods. He says without adequate studies, the children become "the experimental animals."[ii]
The experience of actual GM-fed experimental animals is scary. When GM soy was fed to female rats, most of their babies died within three weeks-compared to a 10% death rate among the control group fed natural soy.[iii] The GM-fed babies were also smaller, and later had problems getting pregnant.[iv]
When male rats were fed GM soy, their testicles actually changed color-from the normal pink to dark blue.[v] Mice fed GM soy had altered young sperm.[vi] Even the embryos of GM fed parent mice had significant changes in their DNA.[vii] Mice fed GM corn in an Austrian government study had fewer babies, which were also smaller than normal.[viii]
Reproductive problems also plague livestock. Investigations in the state of Haryana, India revealed that most buffalo that ate GM cottonseed had complications such as premature deliveries, abortions, infertility, and prolapsed uteruses. Many calves died. In the US, about two dozen farmers reported thousands of pigs became sterile after consuming certain GM corn varieties. Some had false pregnancies; others gave birth to bags of water. Cows and bulls also became infertile when fed the same corn.[ix]
In the US population, the incidence of low birth weight babies, infertility, and infant mortality are all escalating.
Food designed to produce toxin
GM corn and cotton are engineered to produce their own built-in pesticide in every cell. When bugs bite the plant, the poison splits open their stomach and kills them. Biotech companies claim that the pesticide, called Bt-produced from soil bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis-has a history of safe use, since organic farmers and others use Bt bacteria spray for natural insect control. Genetic engineers insert Bt genes into corn and cotton, so the plants do the killing.
The Bt-toxin produced in GM plants, however, is thousands of times more concentrated than natural Bt spray, is designed to be more toxic,[x] has properties of an allergen, and unlike the spray, cannot be washed off the plant.
Moreover, studies confirm that even the less toxic natural bacterial spray is harmful. When dispersed by plane to kill gypsy moths in the Pacific Northwest, about 500 people reported allergy or flu-like symptoms. Some had to go to the emergency room.[xi],[xii]
The exact same symptoms are now being reported by farm workers throughout India, from handling Bt cotton.[xiii] In 2008, based on medical records, the Sunday India reported, "Victims of itching have increased massively this year . . . related to BT cotton farming."[xiv]
GMOs provoke immune reactions
AAEM states, "Multiple animal studies show significant immune dysregulation," including increase in cytokines, which are "associated with asthma, allergy, and inflammation"-all on the rise in the US.
According to GM food safety expert Dr. Arpad Pusztai, changes in the immune status of GM animals are "a consistent feature of all the studies."[xv] Even Monsanto's own research showed significant immune system changes in rats fed Bt corn.[xvi] A November 2008 by the Italian government also found that mice have an immune reaction to Bt corn.[xvii]
GM soy and corn each contain two new proteins with allergenic properties,[xviii] GM soy has up to seven times more trypsin inhibitor-a known soy allergen,[xix]and skin prick tests show some people react to GM, but not to non-GM soy.[xx] Soon after GM soy was introduced to the UK, soy allergies skyrocketed by 50%. Perhaps the US epidemic of food allergies and asthma is a casualty of genetic manipulation.
Animals dying in large numbers
In India, animals graze on cotton plants after harvest. But when shepherds let sheep graze on Bt cotton plants, thousands died. Post mortems showed severe irritation and black patches in both intestines and liver (as well as enlarged bile ducts). Investigators said preliminary evidence "strongly suggests that the sheep mortality was due to a toxin. . . . most probably Bt-toxin."[xxi] In a small follow-up feeding study by the Deccan Development Society, all sheep fed Bt cotton plants died within 30 days; those that grazed on natural cotton plants remained healthy.
In a small village in Andhra Pradesh, buffalo grazed on cotton plants for eight years without incident. On January 3rd, 2008, the buffalo grazed on Bt cotton plants for the first time. All 13 were sick the next day; all died within 3 days.[xxii]
Bt corn was also implicated in the deaths of cows in Germany, and horses, water buffaloes, and chickens in The Philippines.[xxiii]
In lab studies, twice the number of chickens fed Liberty Link corn died; 7 of 20 rats fed a GM tomato developed bleeding stomachs; another 7 of 40 died within two weeks.[xxiv] Monsanto's own study showed evidence of poisoning in major organs of rats fed Bt corn, according to top French toxicologist G. E. Seralini.[xxv]
Worst finding of all-GMOs remain inside of us
The only published human feeding study revealed what may be the most dangerous problem from GM foods. The gene inserted into GM soy transfers into the DNA of bacteria living inside our intestines and continues to function.[xxvi] This means that long after we stop eating GMOs, we may still have potentially harmful GM proteins produced continuously inside of us. Put more plainly, eating a corn chip produced from Bt corn might transform our intestinal bacteria into living pesticide factories, possibly for the rest of our lives.
When evidence of gene transfer is reported at medical conferences around the US, doctors often respond by citing the huge increase of gastrointestinal problems among their patients over the last decade. GM foods might be colonizing the gut flora of North Americans.
Warnings by government scientists ignored and denied
Scientists at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had warned about all these problems even in the early 1990s. According to documents released from a lawsuit, the scientific consensus at the agency was that GM foods were inherently dangerous, and might create hard-to-detect allergies, poisons, gene transfer to gut bacteria, new diseases, and nutritional problems. They urged their superiors to require rigorous long-term tests.[xxvii] But the White House had ordered the agency to promote biotechnology and the FDA responded by recruiting Michael Taylor, Monsanto's former attorney, to head up the formation of GMO policy. That policy, which is in effect today, denies knowledge of scientists' concerns and declares that no safety studies on GMOs are required. It is up to Monsanto and the other biotech companies to determine if their foods are safe. Mr. Taylor later became Monsanto's vice president.
Dangerously few studies, untraceable diseases
AAEM states, "GM foods have not been properly tested" and "pose a serious health risk." Not a single human clinical trial on GMOs has been published. A 2007 review of published scientific literature on the "potential toxic effects/health risks of GM plants" revealed "that experimental data are very scarce." The author concludes his review by asking, "Where is the scientific evidence showing that GM plants/food are toxicologically safe, as assumed by the biotechnology companies?"[xxviii]
Famed Canadian geneticist David Suzuki answers, "The experiments simply haven't been done and we now have become the guinea pigs." He adds, "Anyone that says, 'Oh, we know that this is perfectly safe,' I say is either unbelievably stupid or deliberately lying."[xxix]
Dr. Schubert points out, "If there are problems, we will probably never know because the cause will not be traceable and many diseases take a very long time to develop." If GMOs happen to cause immediate and acute symptoms with a unique signature, perhaps then we might have a chance to trace the cause.
This is precisely what happened during a US epidemic in the late 1980s. The disease was fast acting, deadly, and caused a unique measurable change in the blood-but it still took more than four years to identify that an epidemic was even occurring. By then it had killed about 100 Americans and caused 5,000-10,000 people to fall sick or become permanently disabled. It was caused by a genetically engineered brand of a food supplement called L-tryptophan.
If other GM foods are contributing to the rise of autism, obesity, diabetes, asthma, cancer, heart disease, allergies, reproductive problems, or any other common health problem now plaguing Americans, we may never know. In fact, since animals fed GMOs had such a wide variety of problems, susceptible people may react to GM food with multiple symptoms. It is therefore telling that in the first nine years after the large scale introduction of GM crops in 1996, the incidence of people with three or more chronic diseases nearly doubled, from 7% to 13%.[xxx]
To help identify if GMOs are causing harm, the AAEM asks their "members, the medical community, and the independent scientific community to gather case studies potentially related to GM food consumption and health effects, begin epidemiological research to investigate the role of GM foods on human health, and conduct safe methods of determining the effect of GM foods on human health."
Citizens need not wait for the results before taking the doctors advice to avoid GM foods. People can stay away from anything with soy or corn derivatives, cottonseed and canola oil, and sugar from GM sugar beets-unless it says organic or "non-GMO." There is a pocket Non-GMO Shopping Guide, co-produced by the Institute for Responsible Technology and the Center for Food Safety, which is available as a download, as well as in natural food stores and in many doctors' offices.
If even a small percentage of people choose non-GMO brands, the food industry will likely respond as they did in Europe-by removing all GM ingredients. Thus, AAEM's non-GMO prescription may be a watershed for the US food supply.
Jeffrey M. Smith
Executive Director
Best Selling Author, Independent Filmmaker
Institute for Responsible Technology
http://www.healthiereating.org
Dr. Amy L. Dean, D.O.
Public Relations Chair
Member, Board of Directors
American Academy of Environmental Medicine
http://www.aaemonline.org/index.html
href="http://www.aaemonline.org/index.html%3C/span%3E%3C/p%3E" target="_blank">
[i] http://www.aaemonline.org/gmopost.html
[ii] David Schubert, personal communication to H. Penfound, Greenpeace Canada, October 25, 2002.
[iii] Irina Ermakova, "Genetically modified soy leads to the decrease of weight and high mortality of rat pups of the first generation. Preliminary studies," Ecosinform1 (2006): 4–9.
[iv] Irina Ermakova, "Experimental Evidence of GMO Hazards," Presentation at Scientists for a GM Free Europe, EU Parliament, Brussels, June 12, 2007
[v] Irina Ermakova, "Experimental Evidence of GMO Hazards," Presentation at Scientists for a GM Free Europe, EU Parliament, Brussels, June 12, 2007
[vi] L. Vecchio et al, "Ultrastructural Analysis of Testes from Mice Fed on Genetically Modified Soybean," European Journal of Histochemistry 48, no. 4 (Oct–Dec 2004):449–454.
[vii] Oliveri et al., "Temporary Depression of Transcription in Mouse Pre-implantion Embryos from Mice Fed on Genetically Modified Soybean," 48th Symposium of the Society for Histochemistry, Lake Maggiore (Italy), September 7–10, 2006.
[viii] Alberta Velimirov and Claudia Binter, "Biological effects of transgenic maize NK603xMON810 fed in long term reproduction studies in mice," Forschungsberichte der Sektion IV, Band 3/2008
[ix] Jerry Rosman, personal communication, 2006
[x] See for example, A. Dutton, H. Klein, J. Romeis, and F. Bigler, "Uptake of Bt-toxin by herbivores feeding on transgenic maize and consequences for the predatorChrysoperia carnea," Ecological Entomology 27 (2002): 441–7; and J. Romeis, A. Dutton, and F. Bigler, "Bacillus thuringiensis toxin (Cry1Ab) has no direct effect on larvae of the green lacewing Chrysoperla carnea (Stephens) (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae)," Journal of Insect Physiology 50, no. 2–3 (2004): 175–183.
[xi] Washington State Department of Health, "Report of health surveillance activities: Asian gypsy moth control program," (Olympia, WA: Washington State Dept. of Health, 1993).
[xii] M. Green, et al., "Public health implications of the microbial pesticide Bacillus thuringiensis: An epidemiological study, Oregon, 1985-86," Amer. J. Public Health80, no. 7(1990): 848–852.
[xiii] Ashish Gupta et. al., "Impact of Bt Cotton on Farmers' Health (in Barwani and Dhar District of Madhya Pradesh)," Investigation Report, Oct–Dec 2005.
[xiv] Sunday India, October, 26, 2008
[xv] October 24, 2005 correspondence between Arpad Pusztai and Brian John
[xvi] John M. Burns, "13-Week Dietary Subchronic Comparison Study with MON 863 Corn in Rats Preceded by a 1-Week Baseline Food Consumption Determination with PMI Certified Rodent Diet #5002," December 17, 2002. See Monsanto Rat Study.
[xvii] Alberto Finamore, et al, "Intestinal and Peripheral Immune Response to MON810 Maize Ingestion in Weaning and Old Mice," J. Agric. Food Chem., 2008, 56(23), pp 11533–11539, November 14, 2008
[xviii] See L Zolla, et al, "Proteomics as a complementary tool for identifying unintended side effects occurring in transgenic maize seeds as a result of genetic modifications," J Proteome Res. 2008 May;7(5):1850-61; Hye-Yung Yum, Soo-Young Lee, Kyung-Eun Lee, Myung-Hyun Sohn, Kyu-Earn Kim, "Genetically Modified and Wild Soybeans: An immunologic comparison," Allergy and Asthma Proceedings 26, no. 3 (May–June 2005): 210-216(7); and Gendel, "The use of amino acid sequence alignments to assess potential allergenicity of proteins used in genetically modified foods," Advances in Food and Nutrition Research 42 (1998), 45–62.
[xix] A. Pusztai and S. Bardocz, "GMO in animal nutrition: potential benefits and risks," Chapter 17, Biology of Nutrition in Growing Animals, R. Mosenthin, J. Zentek and T. Zebrowska (Eds.) Elsevier, October 2005
[xx] Hye-Yung Yum, Soo-Young Lee, Kyung-Eun Lee, Myung-Hyun Sohn, Kyu-Earn Kim, "Genetically Modified and Wild Soybeans: An immunologic comparison,"Allergy and Asthma Proceedings 26, no. 3 (May–June 2005): 210-216(7).
[xxi] "Mortality in Sheep Flocks after Grazing on Bt Cotton Fields-Warangal District, Andhra Pradesh" Report of the Preliminary Assessment, April 2006, http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp
[xxii] Personal communication and visit, January 2009.
[xxiii] Jeffrey M. Smith, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, Yes! Books, Fairfield, IA USA 2007
[xxiv] Arpad Pusztai, "Can Science Give Us the Tools for Recognizing Possible Health Risks for GM Food?" Nutrition and Health 16 (2002): 73–84.
[xxv] Stéphane Foucart, "Controversy Surrounds a GMO," Le Monde, 14 December 2004; referencing, John M. Burns, "13-Week Dietary Subchronic Comparison Study with MON 863 Corn in Rats Preceded by a 1-Week Baseline Food Consumption Determination with PMI Certified Rodent Diet #5002," December 17, 2002. See Monsanto Rat Study.
[xxvi] Netherwood et al, "Assessing the survival of transgenic plant DNA in the human gastrointestinal tract," Nature Biotechnology 22 (2004): 2.
[xxvii] See memos at www.biointegrity.org
[xxviii] José Domingo, "Toxicity Studies of Genetically Modified Plants: A Review of the Published Literature," Critical reviews in food science and nutrition, 2007, vol. 47, no8, pp. 721-733
[xxix] Angela Hall, "Suzuki warns against hastily accepting GMOs", The Leader-Post (Canada), 26 April 2005.
[xxx] Kathryn Anne Paez, et al, "Rising Out-Of-Pocket Spending For Chronic Conditions: A Ten-Year Trend," Health Affairs, 28, no. 1 (2009): 15-25
Author's Website: http://www.responsibletechnology.org/
Author's Bio: International bestselling author Jeffrey M. Smith is a leading spokesperson on the health dangers of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). His globally respected research and magnetic communication style captured public attention in 2003 with his first book on the serious yet unknown side effects of genetically engineered foods, Seeds of Deception : Exposing Industry and Government Lies about the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You’re Eating. Seeds of Deception became the world’s best selling book on the health risks of GMOs and is credited with motivating changes in consumer buying habits to safer, non-GMO foods. In his second book, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, Mr. Smith reveals insider documents about GMO safety trials that are sure to evoke strong emotions in the reader. Genetic Roulette shows how the world’s most powerful Ag biotech companies bluff and mislead critics, Congress and the FDA about food safety research for the products Americans buy everyday. Go to www.geneticroulette.com to read an excerpt. Mr. Smith has counseled world leaders from every continent, influenced the first state laws regulating GMOs and has united leaders to support The Campaign for Healthier Eating in America, a revolutionary industry and consumer movement to remove GMOs from the natural food industry. A popular keynote speaker, he has lectured in 25 countries and has been quoted by government leaders and hundreds of media outlets across the globe including, The New York Times, Washington Post, BBC World Service, Nature, The Independent, Daily Telegraph, New Scientist, The Times (London), Associated Press, Reuters News Service, Time Magazine and Genetic Engineering News. Mr. Smith directs the Campaign for Healthier Eating in America from the Institute for Responsible Technology, where he is executive director. He is also the producer of the docu-video series, The GMO Trilogy and writes an internationally syndicated monthly column, Spilling the Beans. The Institute for Responsible Technology, www.responsibletechnology.org, is a public education nonprofit that works on major public initiatives with scientists and concerned citizens from around the world, to shine a spotlight on the dangers of GMOs. Prior to founding the Institute, Mr. Smith was the vice president of marketing communications for a GMO detection laboratory and a consultant to leading industry groups and organizations. Mr. Smith has written extensively on the GMO issue for more than a decade. He lives with his wife in Iowa, surrounded by genetically modified soybeans and corn. The Institute for Responsible Technology fulfills its mission by: Serving as the voice of non-GMO education to the media, trade organizations, government, business, consumers and international bodies. Convening opportunities for non-GMO leaders to work together on key issues. Promoting policies that enable grassroots community members to engage with public officials on a nonpartisan basis. Supporting the development and dissemination of strategies to strengthen non-GMO volunteering, voting, giving, and other forms of citizen engagement.
http://www.opednews.com/populum/print_friendly.php?p=American-Academy-of-Enviro-by-Jeffrey-M-Smith-090519-809.html
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Monsanto’s Terminator Making a Comeback? Enter the Zombie!
By Barbara H. Peterson
Monsanto and its cohorts in crime promised us that they would not be using Terminator technology called GURT, or genetic use restricted technology. In fact, the United Nations actually issued a moratorium on the project. So we’re safe, right? Wrong.
As usual, the boys in the little white lab coats have not been idle. In spite of the moratorium, not only are they working heatedly on Terminator technology, but are getting ready to introduce Zombie technology. Terminator, and Traitor or Zombie technologies are just variations of GURT. Whereas Terminator technology produces plants with sterile seeds, Zombie technology carries this a step further by creating plants that could require a chemical application to trigger seed fertility every year. Pay for the chemical or get sterile seed. This is called reversible transgenic sterility. They have been working steadily on perfecting this technology, and are now poised to introduce it to the world as a solution to the current GMO contamination problem. Move over Terminator, here comes the Zombie.
If a field gets contaminated with seeds containing the Terminator gene, the resulting plants will have sterile seeds, so the reproductive cycle ends. If the contamination is from the Zombie gene, the resulting plants will most likely require a certain pesticide or will be sterile.
Plants are engineered with sterility as the default condition, but sterility can be reversed with the application of an external stimulus that restores the plant’s viability. In order to bring the “zombie” seed back from the dead, the farmer or breeder must use an external stimulus (such as a proprietary chemical) to restore the seed’s fertility. (Terminator the Sequel, 2007 PDF doc)
Either way, if you are a small farmer with a contaminated field, your seed-saving venture for the following year will be less than successful. Planting sterile seeds takes the same amount of work as well as monetary outlay that planting good seeds does, but without the return on investment. And, you cannot tell the difference between the good, the bad, and the ugly seeds until it’s too late. That is, if the patent enforcement brigade doesn’t raid your property first and force you to destroy your crops and all of your seeds due to patent infringement. Then you get nothing, and have to pay for the privilege.
Oh, and did I forget to mention that Monsanto announced in 2006, its takeover of Delta Pine & Land?
http://www.banterminator.org/News-Updates/News-Updates/Monsanto-Announces-Takeover-of-Delta-Pine-Land
This would not be of much consequence, but for the fact that Delta Pine & Land is a joint owner along with the USDA of US patent # 5,723,765 - GURT technology.
In March 1998 the US Patent Office granted Patent No. 5,723,765 to Delta Pine & Land for a patent titled, Control of Plant Gene _Expression. The patent is owned jointly, according to Delta Pine’s Security & Exchange Commission 10K filing, ‘by DP&L and the United States of America, as represented by the Secretary of Agriculture.’ (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3082)
This makes, as of 2006, Monsanto and the United States of America (Corp USA), as represented by the Secretary of Agriculture (USDA), which is currently Tom Vilsack, joint owners of the GURT patent. Kind of gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling all over, doesn’t it?
Barbara H. Peterson
Read the following article from ETC Group and download the full 28 page report here:
etcomm95_tsequel_11june071
Here is another report on GURT technology from Germany:
german_scientists_on_sst
Terminator: The Sequel
http://www.etcgroup.org/en/materials/publications.html?pub_id=635
Despite the fact that governments re-affirmed and strengthened the United Nations’ moratorium on Terminator technology (a.k.a. genetic use restriction technology [GURTs]) in March 2006, public and private sector researchers are developing a new generation of suicide seeds - using chemically induced “switches” to turn a genetically modified (GM) plant’s fertility on or off.
Issue: Under the guise of biosafety, the European Union’s 3-year Transcontainer Project is investing millions of euros in strategies that cannot promise fail-safe containment of transgenes from GM crops, but could nonetheless function as Terminator, posing unacceptable threats to farmers, biodiversity and food sovereignty. Terminator technology - genetic seed sterilization - was initially developed by the multinational seed/agrochemical industry and the US government to maximize seed industry profits by preventing farmers from re-planting harvested seed. Researchers are also developing new techniques to excise transgenes from GM plants at a specific time in the plant’s development, and methods to kill a plant with “conditionally lethal” genes. This new generation of GURTs will shift the burden of trait control to the farmer. Under some scenarios, farmers will be obliged to pay for the privilege of restoring seed fertility every year - a new form of perpetual monopoly for the seed industry.
Impact: Whether intended or not, new research on molecular containment of transgenes will ultimately allow the multinational seed industry to tighten its grasp on proprietary germplasm and restrict the rights of farmers. Industry and governments are already working to overturn the existing moratorium on Terminator technology at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). In the months leading up to the CBD’s 9th Conference of the Parties (Bonn, Germany 19-30 May 2008), industry will argue that global warming requires urgent introduction of transgenic crops and trees for biofuels - and that Terminator-type technologies offer a precautionary, environmental necessity to prevent transgene flow. Ironically, society is being asked to foot the bill for a new techno-fix to mitigate the genetic contamination caused by the biotech industry’s defective GM seeds.
Players: Taxpayer-financed research on biological containment of GM crops subsidizes the corporate agenda. A handful of multinational seed corporations control biotech seeds and the proprietary seed market as a whole has seen unprecedented corporate concentration. In 2006, the world’s top 4 seed companies - Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta and Groupe Limagrain - accounted for half (49%) of the proprietary seed market.
Policy: Governments keep trying to find ways to make GM seeds safe and acceptable and they keep failing. They should stop trying. There is no such thing as a safe and acceptable form of Terminator. The EU should discontinue funding for research on “reversible transgenic sterility,” and re-assess funding for other research projects undertaken by Transcontainer. Rather than support research on coexistence to bail out the agbiotech industry, the EU should instead fund sustainable agricultural research that benefits farmers and the public. National governments should propose legislation to prohibit field-testing and commercial sale of Terminator technologies. Governments meeting at the 9th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Bonn, Germany must strengthen the moratorium on GURTs by recommending a ban on the technology.
To read the 28-page report, Download PDF (1 MB) here: etcomm95_tsequel_11june071
http://farmwars.info/?p=845
Monsanto and its cohorts in crime promised us that they would not be using Terminator technology called GURT, or genetic use restricted technology. In fact, the United Nations actually issued a moratorium on the project. So we’re safe, right? Wrong.
As usual, the boys in the little white lab coats have not been idle. In spite of the moratorium, not only are they working heatedly on Terminator technology, but are getting ready to introduce Zombie technology. Terminator, and Traitor or Zombie technologies are just variations of GURT. Whereas Terminator technology produces plants with sterile seeds, Zombie technology carries this a step further by creating plants that could require a chemical application to trigger seed fertility every year. Pay for the chemical or get sterile seed. This is called reversible transgenic sterility. They have been working steadily on perfecting this technology, and are now poised to introduce it to the world as a solution to the current GMO contamination problem. Move over Terminator, here comes the Zombie.
If a field gets contaminated with seeds containing the Terminator gene, the resulting plants will have sterile seeds, so the reproductive cycle ends. If the contamination is from the Zombie gene, the resulting plants will most likely require a certain pesticide or will be sterile.
Plants are engineered with sterility as the default condition, but sterility can be reversed with the application of an external stimulus that restores the plant’s viability. In order to bring the “zombie” seed back from the dead, the farmer or breeder must use an external stimulus (such as a proprietary chemical) to restore the seed’s fertility. (Terminator the Sequel, 2007 PDF doc)
Either way, if you are a small farmer with a contaminated field, your seed-saving venture for the following year will be less than successful. Planting sterile seeds takes the same amount of work as well as monetary outlay that planting good seeds does, but without the return on investment. And, you cannot tell the difference between the good, the bad, and the ugly seeds until it’s too late. That is, if the patent enforcement brigade doesn’t raid your property first and force you to destroy your crops and all of your seeds due to patent infringement. Then you get nothing, and have to pay for the privilege.
Oh, and did I forget to mention that Monsanto announced in 2006, its takeover of Delta Pine & Land?
http://www.banterminator.org/News-Updates/News-Updates/Monsanto-Announces-Takeover-of-Delta-Pine-Land
This would not be of much consequence, but for the fact that Delta Pine & Land is a joint owner along with the USDA of US patent # 5,723,765 - GURT technology.
In March 1998 the US Patent Office granted Patent No. 5,723,765 to Delta Pine & Land for a patent titled, Control of Plant Gene _Expression. The patent is owned jointly, according to Delta Pine’s Security & Exchange Commission 10K filing, ‘by DP&L and the United States of America, as represented by the Secretary of Agriculture.’ (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3082)
This makes, as of 2006, Monsanto and the United States of America (Corp USA), as represented by the Secretary of Agriculture (USDA), which is currently Tom Vilsack, joint owners of the GURT patent. Kind of gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling all over, doesn’t it?
Barbara H. Peterson
Read the following article from ETC Group and download the full 28 page report here:
etcomm95_tsequel_11june071
Here is another report on GURT technology from Germany:
german_scientists_on_sst
Terminator: The Sequel
http://www.etcgroup.org/en/materials/publications.html?pub_id=635
Despite the fact that governments re-affirmed and strengthened the United Nations’ moratorium on Terminator technology (a.k.a. genetic use restriction technology [GURTs]) in March 2006, public and private sector researchers are developing a new generation of suicide seeds - using chemically induced “switches” to turn a genetically modified (GM) plant’s fertility on or off.
Issue: Under the guise of biosafety, the European Union’s 3-year Transcontainer Project is investing millions of euros in strategies that cannot promise fail-safe containment of transgenes from GM crops, but could nonetheless function as Terminator, posing unacceptable threats to farmers, biodiversity and food sovereignty. Terminator technology - genetic seed sterilization - was initially developed by the multinational seed/agrochemical industry and the US government to maximize seed industry profits by preventing farmers from re-planting harvested seed. Researchers are also developing new techniques to excise transgenes from GM plants at a specific time in the plant’s development, and methods to kill a plant with “conditionally lethal” genes. This new generation of GURTs will shift the burden of trait control to the farmer. Under some scenarios, farmers will be obliged to pay for the privilege of restoring seed fertility every year - a new form of perpetual monopoly for the seed industry.
Impact: Whether intended or not, new research on molecular containment of transgenes will ultimately allow the multinational seed industry to tighten its grasp on proprietary germplasm and restrict the rights of farmers. Industry and governments are already working to overturn the existing moratorium on Terminator technology at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). In the months leading up to the CBD’s 9th Conference of the Parties (Bonn, Germany 19-30 May 2008), industry will argue that global warming requires urgent introduction of transgenic crops and trees for biofuels - and that Terminator-type technologies offer a precautionary, environmental necessity to prevent transgene flow. Ironically, society is being asked to foot the bill for a new techno-fix to mitigate the genetic contamination caused by the biotech industry’s defective GM seeds.
Players: Taxpayer-financed research on biological containment of GM crops subsidizes the corporate agenda. A handful of multinational seed corporations control biotech seeds and the proprietary seed market as a whole has seen unprecedented corporate concentration. In 2006, the world’s top 4 seed companies - Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta and Groupe Limagrain - accounted for half (49%) of the proprietary seed market.
Policy: Governments keep trying to find ways to make GM seeds safe and acceptable and they keep failing. They should stop trying. There is no such thing as a safe and acceptable form of Terminator. The EU should discontinue funding for research on “reversible transgenic sterility,” and re-assess funding for other research projects undertaken by Transcontainer. Rather than support research on coexistence to bail out the agbiotech industry, the EU should instead fund sustainable agricultural research that benefits farmers and the public. National governments should propose legislation to prohibit field-testing and commercial sale of Terminator technologies. Governments meeting at the 9th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Bonn, Germany must strengthen the moratorium on GURTs by recommending a ban on the technology.
To read the 28-page report, Download PDF (1 MB) here: etcomm95_tsequel_11june071
http://farmwars.info/?p=845
Colonizing Culture
Wednesday 27 May 2009
by: Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Transgress
The geo-strategic expansion of the American empire is an accepted fact of contemporary history. I have been writing in these columns about the impact of the US occupation on the people of Iraq in the wake of the "hard" colonization via F-16s, tanks, 2,000-pound bombs, white phosphorous and cluster bombs.
Here I offer a brief glimpse into the less obvious but far more insidious phenomenon of "soft" colonization. That scholars and political thinkers have talked at length of such processes only establishes the uncomfortable reality that history is bound to repeat itself in all its ugliness, unless the human civilization makes a concerted effort to eliminate the use of brute force from human affairs.
Gandhi, the apostle of non-violent resistance said:
"I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. I refuse to live in other people's houses as an interloper, a beggar or a slave."
This is an idea rendered irrelevant in the current scenario, where the mightier among the world's nations have secured the mandate to invade, with impunity, any society and any state that can be exploited for resources. Unlike earlier times, modern-day invasions are invariably camouflaged by a façade of elaborate deceit that claims altruistic intent as the motive of assault. In this new scheme of things, resistance is deemed as insurgency and dissent is unpatriotic. Those that are invaded do not have the luxury to decide between being beggar and slave. Culture would be the last thing on their minds as they struggle to stay alive. Yet it is the loss of their culture that ultimately causes the disintegration of these societies to the absolute advantage of their victors.
It is said that history is written by the victor. What is not said is that destroying the enemy is only half the purpose of a victor. The other half is the subjugation and drastic alteration of the self-perception of the enemy, so as to gain unquestioned control over every aspect of the subjugated state, its populace and its resources, so that having won victory it can get on with the "much bigger business of plunder," according to Franz Fanon, philosopher, psychiatrist, author and a pre-eminent thinker of the twentieth century.
At one level we have the Human Terrain System (HTS) I have written about previously wherein social scientists are embedded with combat units, ostensibly to help the occupiers better understand the cultures they are occupying. The veiled intent is to exploit existing schisms and fault-lines in these societies to the occupier's own advantage through the policy of divide and conquer.
As Edward Said stated in "Orientalism":
"... there is a difference between knowledge of other peoples and other times that is the result of understanding, compassion, careful study and analysis for their own sakes, and on the other hand knowledge - if that is what it is - that is part of an overall campaign of self-affirmation, belligerency, and outright war. There is, after all, a profound difference between the will to understand for purposes of coexistence and humanistic enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of control and external enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of control and external dominion."
It is extremely obvious that the HTS belongs to this second category.
At another unquestioned level, the "democratization" and "modernization" of a "barbaric" society goes on. The embedded scholars of HTS evidently find no evidence of these cultures having withstood decades of international isolation and assault, yet sustained their sovereignty by the sheer dint of their education, culture and a well-integrated diverse social fabric. So the US sets up a range of state-funded programs, ostensibly to empower the women and youth of the target society, in the ways of democracy and modern civilization. Whether or not that suspect goal is accomplished, the badgered collective consciousness of the invaded people, traumatized by loss and conflict, does begin to submit to the "norms" of behavior prescribed by the victor, even when they are in violation of actual norms of society that may have prevailed prior to invasion.
Transform
Fanon said:
"A national culture under colonial domination is a contested culture whose destruction is sought in systematic fashion."
Describing the psychopathology of colonization he said, "Every effort is made to bring the colonized person to admit the inferiority of his culture which has been transformed into instinctive patterns of behavior, to recognize the unreality of his 'nation', and, in the last extreme, the confused and imperfect character of his own biological structure."
Fanon's speech to the Congress of Black African Writers in 1959 is an uncanny description of Iraq's tragedy today:
"Colonial domination, because it is total and tends to over-simplify, very soon manages to disrupt in spectacular fashion the cultural life of a conquered people. This cultural obliteration is made possible by the negation of national reality, by new legal relations introduced by the occupying power, by the banishment of the natives and their customs to outlying districts by colonial society, by expropriation, and by the systematic enslaving of men and women ...
"For culture is first the expression of a nation, the expression of its preferences, of its taboos and of its patterns. It is at every stage of the whole of society that other taboos, values and patterns are formed. A national culture is the sum total of all these appraisals; it is the result of internal and external extensions exerted over society as a whole and also at every level of that society. In the colonial situation, culture, which is doubly deprived of the support of the nation and of the state, falls away and dies."
At times we may witness blatant violations as in the distribution of backpacks with US flags to Iraqi children.
A more repulsive example is the Skin White Serum. One of many companies engaged in selling skin-bleaching cream is Skin White Research Labs. They proudly sell Skin White Serum in "over 30 countries." There are countless other companies involved in this market, selling similar products, like Skin White Bleaching Cream and Xtreme White.
The hidden message here is that, politically, those in the culture being colonized should seek to cover their brown skin, which is in fact part of their ethnic identity, and aspire to the culture, power and influence of the dominant culture at the expense of their own.
Somewhat less subtle is the corporate colonization of Iraq's culture. An example of this is Iraqi girls carrying Barbie backpacks in the Sadr City area of Baghdad.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the dominant culture for a while now has been the US military. Since it has all the firepower and the brute force, it sets the norms and the standard. This is done by repeated suggestions through propaganda, and advertisements suggesting that the local population is of lesser worth than the occupiers of their country in their appearance, their beliefs, their customs and their way of life.
The material practices of society sustain its culture, which is the lifeline of identity, and affirmation that the progress of a nation depends on. Social custom, production systems, education, art and architecture are a few of the visible pillars of culture.
Community and custom become the first casualties when an entire people, unequal in the face of military might, struggle to survive under perpetual fear of loss and death. In a state of vacuum, the threatened society will grasp whatever is offered by the occupier as a "better" way of living. In the process it is bound to lose its own tried and tested self-sustaining modes of living.
With the destruction of infrastructure, education, health and livelihood sources are destroyed. When rehabilitation and restoration come packaged in alien systems of knowledge (read-USAID), that, too, is accepted in the absence of what existed earlier.
Literature, art and architecture meet with more systemic demolition.
My artist friends in Baghdad have reported,
"The occupation forces encouraged the rebels to loot museum and libraries. Five thousand years of history and art were irretrievably lost in hours. It is a loss for the world, not Iraq alone. Buildings can be fixed, so can electricity, but where can I find another Khalid al-Rahal to make me a new statue for Abu Fafar al-Mansoor? How will I replace the artifacts dating back to thousands of years? Iraq is altered forever."
I have heard from ordinary men and women in Iraq, "We need our art, because it connects us with what has brought us here, and reminds us of where we are headed." Dr. Saad Eskander has been director general of whatever remains of Iraq's National Archive and Library and he says, "This building was burned twice, and looted. We have lost sixty percent of our archival collections like maps, historical records and photographs. Twenty-five percent of our books were lost ... It has crippled our culture, and culture reaches to the bottom of peoples' hearts, whereas politics do not."
It is not difficult to see that the extent of devastation caused by the invasion and occupation of Iraq goes beyond loss of life, livelihood and property. The historical and cultural roots of the nation have been destroyed.
by: Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Transgress
The geo-strategic expansion of the American empire is an accepted fact of contemporary history. I have been writing in these columns about the impact of the US occupation on the people of Iraq in the wake of the "hard" colonization via F-16s, tanks, 2,000-pound bombs, white phosphorous and cluster bombs.
Here I offer a brief glimpse into the less obvious but far more insidious phenomenon of "soft" colonization. That scholars and political thinkers have talked at length of such processes only establishes the uncomfortable reality that history is bound to repeat itself in all its ugliness, unless the human civilization makes a concerted effort to eliminate the use of brute force from human affairs.
Gandhi, the apostle of non-violent resistance said:
"I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. I refuse to live in other people's houses as an interloper, a beggar or a slave."
This is an idea rendered irrelevant in the current scenario, where the mightier among the world's nations have secured the mandate to invade, with impunity, any society and any state that can be exploited for resources. Unlike earlier times, modern-day invasions are invariably camouflaged by a façade of elaborate deceit that claims altruistic intent as the motive of assault. In this new scheme of things, resistance is deemed as insurgency and dissent is unpatriotic. Those that are invaded do not have the luxury to decide between being beggar and slave. Culture would be the last thing on their minds as they struggle to stay alive. Yet it is the loss of their culture that ultimately causes the disintegration of these societies to the absolute advantage of their victors.
It is said that history is written by the victor. What is not said is that destroying the enemy is only half the purpose of a victor. The other half is the subjugation and drastic alteration of the self-perception of the enemy, so as to gain unquestioned control over every aspect of the subjugated state, its populace and its resources, so that having won victory it can get on with the "much bigger business of plunder," according to Franz Fanon, philosopher, psychiatrist, author and a pre-eminent thinker of the twentieth century.
At one level we have the Human Terrain System (HTS) I have written about previously wherein social scientists are embedded with combat units, ostensibly to help the occupiers better understand the cultures they are occupying. The veiled intent is to exploit existing schisms and fault-lines in these societies to the occupier's own advantage through the policy of divide and conquer.
As Edward Said stated in "Orientalism":
"... there is a difference between knowledge of other peoples and other times that is the result of understanding, compassion, careful study and analysis for their own sakes, and on the other hand knowledge - if that is what it is - that is part of an overall campaign of self-affirmation, belligerency, and outright war. There is, after all, a profound difference between the will to understand for purposes of coexistence and humanistic enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of control and external enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of control and external dominion."
It is extremely obvious that the HTS belongs to this second category.
At another unquestioned level, the "democratization" and "modernization" of a "barbaric" society goes on. The embedded scholars of HTS evidently find no evidence of these cultures having withstood decades of international isolation and assault, yet sustained their sovereignty by the sheer dint of their education, culture and a well-integrated diverse social fabric. So the US sets up a range of state-funded programs, ostensibly to empower the women and youth of the target society, in the ways of democracy and modern civilization. Whether or not that suspect goal is accomplished, the badgered collective consciousness of the invaded people, traumatized by loss and conflict, does begin to submit to the "norms" of behavior prescribed by the victor, even when they are in violation of actual norms of society that may have prevailed prior to invasion.
Transform
Fanon said:
"A national culture under colonial domination is a contested culture whose destruction is sought in systematic fashion."
Describing the psychopathology of colonization he said, "Every effort is made to bring the colonized person to admit the inferiority of his culture which has been transformed into instinctive patterns of behavior, to recognize the unreality of his 'nation', and, in the last extreme, the confused and imperfect character of his own biological structure."
Fanon's speech to the Congress of Black African Writers in 1959 is an uncanny description of Iraq's tragedy today:
"Colonial domination, because it is total and tends to over-simplify, very soon manages to disrupt in spectacular fashion the cultural life of a conquered people. This cultural obliteration is made possible by the negation of national reality, by new legal relations introduced by the occupying power, by the banishment of the natives and their customs to outlying districts by colonial society, by expropriation, and by the systematic enslaving of men and women ...
"For culture is first the expression of a nation, the expression of its preferences, of its taboos and of its patterns. It is at every stage of the whole of society that other taboos, values and patterns are formed. A national culture is the sum total of all these appraisals; it is the result of internal and external extensions exerted over society as a whole and also at every level of that society. In the colonial situation, culture, which is doubly deprived of the support of the nation and of the state, falls away and dies."
At times we may witness blatant violations as in the distribution of backpacks with US flags to Iraqi children.
A more repulsive example is the Skin White Serum. One of many companies engaged in selling skin-bleaching cream is Skin White Research Labs. They proudly sell Skin White Serum in "over 30 countries." There are countless other companies involved in this market, selling similar products, like Skin White Bleaching Cream and Xtreme White.
The hidden message here is that, politically, those in the culture being colonized should seek to cover their brown skin, which is in fact part of their ethnic identity, and aspire to the culture, power and influence of the dominant culture at the expense of their own.
Somewhat less subtle is the corporate colonization of Iraq's culture. An example of this is Iraqi girls carrying Barbie backpacks in the Sadr City area of Baghdad.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the dominant culture for a while now has been the US military. Since it has all the firepower and the brute force, it sets the norms and the standard. This is done by repeated suggestions through propaganda, and advertisements suggesting that the local population is of lesser worth than the occupiers of their country in their appearance, their beliefs, their customs and their way of life.
The material practices of society sustain its culture, which is the lifeline of identity, and affirmation that the progress of a nation depends on. Social custom, production systems, education, art and architecture are a few of the visible pillars of culture.
Community and custom become the first casualties when an entire people, unequal in the face of military might, struggle to survive under perpetual fear of loss and death. In a state of vacuum, the threatened society will grasp whatever is offered by the occupier as a "better" way of living. In the process it is bound to lose its own tried and tested self-sustaining modes of living.
With the destruction of infrastructure, education, health and livelihood sources are destroyed. When rehabilitation and restoration come packaged in alien systems of knowledge (read-USAID), that, too, is accepted in the absence of what existed earlier.
Literature, art and architecture meet with more systemic demolition.
My artist friends in Baghdad have reported,
"The occupation forces encouraged the rebels to loot museum and libraries. Five thousand years of history and art were irretrievably lost in hours. It is a loss for the world, not Iraq alone. Buildings can be fixed, so can electricity, but where can I find another Khalid al-Rahal to make me a new statue for Abu Fafar al-Mansoor? How will I replace the artifacts dating back to thousands of years? Iraq is altered forever."
I have heard from ordinary men and women in Iraq, "We need our art, because it connects us with what has brought us here, and reminds us of where we are headed." Dr. Saad Eskander has been director general of whatever remains of Iraq's National Archive and Library and he says, "This building was burned twice, and looted. We have lost sixty percent of our archival collections like maps, historical records and photographs. Twenty-five percent of our books were lost ... It has crippled our culture, and culture reaches to the bottom of peoples' hearts, whereas politics do not."
It is not difficult to see that the extent of devastation caused by the invasion and occupation of Iraq goes beyond loss of life, livelihood and property. The historical and cultural roots of the nation have been destroyed.
Torture photos: US soldiers raped, sodomized Iraqi prisoners
By Tom Eley
29 May 2009
In an interview with the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph published Wednesday, former US General Antonio Taguba said that photographs the Obama administration is seeking to suppress show images of US soldiers raping and sodomizing Iraqi prisoners. Taguba, who conducted the military inquiry of prisoner abuse at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 after some photos of US soldiers torturing prisoners became public, said that among the photos are images of soldiers raping a female prisoner, raping a male detainee, and committing “sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and phosphorescent tube,” according to the Telegraph.
Gen. Taguba said even the description of the photos is explosive. “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” Taguba said. “The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”
Taguba’s revelations expose the deceit of President Barack Obama’s claim, used to justify the photos’ suppression, that they “are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.” In all, it is believed that there are some 2,000 photographs depicting about 400 cases of US military personnel torturing Iraqis and Afghans at seven military prisons. The Bush administration, and now Obama, have sought to block publication of the images.
Obama also claimed that “the most direct consequence of releasing them...would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.” While this may likely be true, the criminal nature of the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan is already well known by the nations’ populations, who have died and been made refugees in the hundreds of thousands since being invaded in 2003 and 2001, respectively. Indeed, this claim only exposes the true nature of the US occupations: they have never been about establishing democracy, but aimed at stamping out resistance to US control of the strategically important nations through mass bloodletting and terror, the historical modus operandi of every imperialist occupying power.
However, the central reason Obama has chosen to fight the photos’ release is that top US generals announced their opposition to their publication. The generals’ intervention came in the midst of increasingly open dissension from the ranks of the military-intelligence apparatus over Obama’s handling of “the war on terror.” After Obama released four Bush administration legal memos justifying torture, a campaign, spearheaded by Bush Vice President Dick Cheney, was launched, appealing to the military brass and spies. Obama responded by promising he would block any investigation of the previous administration’s carefully crafted and controlled torture policies. He then reversed an earlier decision to not appeal a judge’s ruling in response to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) freedom of information lawsuit launched in 2004, which demanded the release of dozens of the torture photos.
An Obama Pentagon spokesman denied that the suppressed images depict rape, while a carefully worded statement seemed to indicate other photos depict precisely such actions. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Telegraph “has completely mischaracterized the images.... None of the photos in question depict the images that are described in that article.” Whitman did not specifically deny Taguba’s claims.
Obama claims that the torture depicted in the photographs was committed by “a small number of individuals,” and that those “involved have been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken.” Here we may safely assume Obama is referring to a small handful of rank-and-file soldiers.
But what of the high-ranking officers who oversaw, endorsed and most likely ordered the torture and rape of prisoners? If there are 2,000 photographs of prisoner torture that fell under the control of the Pentagon, how many more cases were not photographed? It is clear that the torture and rape of prisoners went far beyond the actions of “a few bad apples.” This torture and sexual humiliation of prisoners—up to and including rape—can only be described as the systematic policy of the US military and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), sanctioned at the highest levels of government. Indeed, the generals’ opposition to further publication of the photos is likely based in part on their own association with the crimes.
The policy of torture came from higher still, however, as recently released Justice Department legal memos and other evidence show. Various forms of torture, including forced nudity and sexual humiliation were studied, justified, and individually approved by top White House and congressional officials. A US Senate Armed Services Committee report issued in April reveals that Bush Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally approved 15 “harsh interrogation” methods. A version of Rumsfeld’s document was used, verbatim, at Abu Ghraib, according to the report. (See “Bush, top cabinet officials monitored torture of detainees”)
In his Telegraph interview, Taguba solidarized himself with Obama’s decision to suppress the photos. Taguba’s own investigation in 2004 was in fact a partial cover-up. He later admitted that he was ordered to confine his investigation to low-ranking military police, although he was aware that high-ranking generals had “extensive knowledge” of the torture. And though he was aware of the photographic evidence of torture and rape at the time, Taguba’s report made no mention of them.
Because his report was not a total whitewash, however, the Bush administration forced the major general into retirement in 2007. He has since described the actions of the Bush administration in Iraq as war crimes. “There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote in the forward for a report by Physicians for Human Rights. “The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account.”
The photographic evidence of rape substantiates evidence Taguba gathered in his investigation, which only became public due to another freedom of information lawsuit. For example, in a sworn deposition Kasim Mehaddi Hilas said he witnessed US military personnel raping a boy. “I saw [a US military translator rape] a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [the soldier] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s **** and the female soldier was taking pictures.”
The sworn deposition also described the anal rape of prisoners with phosphorescent tubes and police clubs, as well as the use of wire in sexual torture.
The rape of Iraqi boys by US military personnel is corroborated by other evidence. Journalist Seymour Hersh, who played a critical role in breaking the Abu Ghraib story in 2004, has evidently seen all of the photos, and is aware of video footage depicting rape. He has not written publicly on their content, but a 2004 speech he gave to the ACLU indicates the sheer horror of the US military’s methods:
“Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay?” Hersh said. “The women were passing messages out saying, ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened,’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst, above all, of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.” In another speech, quoted by Rick Pearlstein, Hersh spoke of “horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.”
The unfathomable crimes depicted in the photos arise inexorably from the project of aggressive wars based on lies. As such, they are the flip side of the conspiracy against the democratic rights of the American people. Both arise from the deepening crisis of US capitalism, which the ruling elite seeks to offset by seizing hold of key resources and strategic advantage over its rivals.
One can only react with horror. Contained in the stories and images of the torture of defenseless prisoners, some of them boys and women, is the true face of US imperialism, which finds no crime beneath its dignity in its effort to subjugate Iraq and Afghanistan. Just as the Vietnam War conjures up images of napalmed children fleeing US soldiers, and Nazi Germany invokes images of emaciated prisoners near death, the images of sexual torture will forever be associated with the American “war on terror.”
In acting to suppress the images and protect the torturers, Obama has made himself an accomplice in these crimes. Moreover, in the absence of criminal investigation, there is every reason to believe that similar crimes continue in Iraq and Afghanistan today.
Indeed, the American ruling class is now engaged in an acrimonious debate over whether or not to openly embrace torture and other illegal aspects of the war on terror—the position advocated by Cheney—or to construct a quasi-legal framework within which similar policies can be carried forward—the position advocated by Obama.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/may2009/tort-m29.shtml
29 May 2009
In an interview with the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph published Wednesday, former US General Antonio Taguba said that photographs the Obama administration is seeking to suppress show images of US soldiers raping and sodomizing Iraqi prisoners. Taguba, who conducted the military inquiry of prisoner abuse at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 after some photos of US soldiers torturing prisoners became public, said that among the photos are images of soldiers raping a female prisoner, raping a male detainee, and committing “sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and phosphorescent tube,” according to the Telegraph.
Gen. Taguba said even the description of the photos is explosive. “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” Taguba said. “The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”
Taguba’s revelations expose the deceit of President Barack Obama’s claim, used to justify the photos’ suppression, that they “are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.” In all, it is believed that there are some 2,000 photographs depicting about 400 cases of US military personnel torturing Iraqis and Afghans at seven military prisons. The Bush administration, and now Obama, have sought to block publication of the images.
Obama also claimed that “the most direct consequence of releasing them...would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.” While this may likely be true, the criminal nature of the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan is already well known by the nations’ populations, who have died and been made refugees in the hundreds of thousands since being invaded in 2003 and 2001, respectively. Indeed, this claim only exposes the true nature of the US occupations: they have never been about establishing democracy, but aimed at stamping out resistance to US control of the strategically important nations through mass bloodletting and terror, the historical modus operandi of every imperialist occupying power.
However, the central reason Obama has chosen to fight the photos’ release is that top US generals announced their opposition to their publication. The generals’ intervention came in the midst of increasingly open dissension from the ranks of the military-intelligence apparatus over Obama’s handling of “the war on terror.” After Obama released four Bush administration legal memos justifying torture, a campaign, spearheaded by Bush Vice President Dick Cheney, was launched, appealing to the military brass and spies. Obama responded by promising he would block any investigation of the previous administration’s carefully crafted and controlled torture policies. He then reversed an earlier decision to not appeal a judge’s ruling in response to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) freedom of information lawsuit launched in 2004, which demanded the release of dozens of the torture photos.
An Obama Pentagon spokesman denied that the suppressed images depict rape, while a carefully worded statement seemed to indicate other photos depict precisely such actions. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Telegraph “has completely mischaracterized the images.... None of the photos in question depict the images that are described in that article.” Whitman did not specifically deny Taguba’s claims.
Obama claims that the torture depicted in the photographs was committed by “a small number of individuals,” and that those “involved have been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken.” Here we may safely assume Obama is referring to a small handful of rank-and-file soldiers.
But what of the high-ranking officers who oversaw, endorsed and most likely ordered the torture and rape of prisoners? If there are 2,000 photographs of prisoner torture that fell under the control of the Pentagon, how many more cases were not photographed? It is clear that the torture and rape of prisoners went far beyond the actions of “a few bad apples.” This torture and sexual humiliation of prisoners—up to and including rape—can only be described as the systematic policy of the US military and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), sanctioned at the highest levels of government. Indeed, the generals’ opposition to further publication of the photos is likely based in part on their own association with the crimes.
The policy of torture came from higher still, however, as recently released Justice Department legal memos and other evidence show. Various forms of torture, including forced nudity and sexual humiliation were studied, justified, and individually approved by top White House and congressional officials. A US Senate Armed Services Committee report issued in April reveals that Bush Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally approved 15 “harsh interrogation” methods. A version of Rumsfeld’s document was used, verbatim, at Abu Ghraib, according to the report. (See “Bush, top cabinet officials monitored torture of detainees”)
In his Telegraph interview, Taguba solidarized himself with Obama’s decision to suppress the photos. Taguba’s own investigation in 2004 was in fact a partial cover-up. He later admitted that he was ordered to confine his investigation to low-ranking military police, although he was aware that high-ranking generals had “extensive knowledge” of the torture. And though he was aware of the photographic evidence of torture and rape at the time, Taguba’s report made no mention of them.
Because his report was not a total whitewash, however, the Bush administration forced the major general into retirement in 2007. He has since described the actions of the Bush administration in Iraq as war crimes. “There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote in the forward for a report by Physicians for Human Rights. “The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account.”
The photographic evidence of rape substantiates evidence Taguba gathered in his investigation, which only became public due to another freedom of information lawsuit. For example, in a sworn deposition Kasim Mehaddi Hilas said he witnessed US military personnel raping a boy. “I saw [a US military translator rape] a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [the soldier] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s **** and the female soldier was taking pictures.”
The sworn deposition also described the anal rape of prisoners with phosphorescent tubes and police clubs, as well as the use of wire in sexual torture.
The rape of Iraqi boys by US military personnel is corroborated by other evidence. Journalist Seymour Hersh, who played a critical role in breaking the Abu Ghraib story in 2004, has evidently seen all of the photos, and is aware of video footage depicting rape. He has not written publicly on their content, but a 2004 speech he gave to the ACLU indicates the sheer horror of the US military’s methods:
“Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay?” Hersh said. “The women were passing messages out saying, ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened,’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst, above all, of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.” In another speech, quoted by Rick Pearlstein, Hersh spoke of “horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.”
The unfathomable crimes depicted in the photos arise inexorably from the project of aggressive wars based on lies. As such, they are the flip side of the conspiracy against the democratic rights of the American people. Both arise from the deepening crisis of US capitalism, which the ruling elite seeks to offset by seizing hold of key resources and strategic advantage over its rivals.
One can only react with horror. Contained in the stories and images of the torture of defenseless prisoners, some of them boys and women, is the true face of US imperialism, which finds no crime beneath its dignity in its effort to subjugate Iraq and Afghanistan. Just as the Vietnam War conjures up images of napalmed children fleeing US soldiers, and Nazi Germany invokes images of emaciated prisoners near death, the images of sexual torture will forever be associated with the American “war on terror.”
In acting to suppress the images and protect the torturers, Obama has made himself an accomplice in these crimes. Moreover, in the absence of criminal investigation, there is every reason to believe that similar crimes continue in Iraq and Afghanistan today.
Indeed, the American ruling class is now engaged in an acrimonious debate over whether or not to openly embrace torture and other illegal aspects of the war on terror—the position advocated by Cheney—or to construct a quasi-legal framework within which similar policies can be carried forward—the position advocated by Obama.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/may2009/tort-m29.shtml
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