Genetically Modified

By Layla Anwar

07 May, 2010

Arab Woman Blues

Some years ago, I knew a Western woman...she was was not exactly a friend, more like an acquaintance, a friend of a good friend of mine. Anyways, this woman I will call her Marion, was newly wed and she and her husband were very much looking forward to having a baby.

When Marion got pregnant, after careful planning, because Westerners love to plan everything right down to the last cent -- she had all the medical care she needed. Tests, ultrasounds and the rest....and during her 4th month of pregnancy she underwent the usual exam to determine that her baby was a healthy fetus.

Marion was devastated when her doctor informed her that her baby had some genetic deformity and she had to undergo an abortion. Marion then lapsed into a severe depression despite the fact that her doctor assured her that she can still have healthy babies in the future, she'd panic at the thought of getting pregnant again and her marital relation suffered a severe blow which ended up in a divorce...

During her grieving period, her friends and family showed her the utmost support...everyone sympathized with her losing a 4 month old fetus, empathy overflowed, so did the pampering, and the endless sessions with specialized psychiatrists who tried their best to help Marion overcome her grief...

It was a big deal...very big deal...how could nature deal such a fate to Marion - everyone wondered...and I saw heads shake in disbelief at this cruelty...and heard the exclamations of horrified indignation, for one pregnancy gone awry.

I felt - well yes it is sad, but it is not the end of the world. She's lucky she found out in mid pregnancy instead of waiting till delivery and she's still young and in good health, she has access to medical services, she lives in a healthy environment, she has a good diet, she has support, and she can get pregnant again...

The fuss was overdone in my opinion...but then Westerners care so much about life, healthy babies, healthy families, and their absolute right to have all of the above in the best conditions possible...

Years passed, I don't know what happened to spoiled Marion, maybe she conceived again, maybe she's still getting over the fact that she had to terminate a pregnancy because of some nature's mishap...but what I do know on the other hand -- is that thousands of Iraqi mothers are being asked not to get pregnant at all...

The latest I heard and it is unofficial, is that in Basra, doctors are advising women not to get pregnant for the next 25 years. Basra being an enclave of the shiite government, no one dares publicly announce that. It just circulates in secret among the newly wed...

In Falluja on the other hand, it is official --women are publicly advised not to have any babies, no number of years are indicated -- it is assumed for a long, long time...

The reason for this pregnancy dissuasion stems from the fact that the West who cares so much about its own little infants, had absolutely no qualms into pouring tons of lethal chemicals as in Weapons of Mass Destruction over the people of Basra and Falluja --to name but a few...chemical weapons like depleted uranium and phosphorus which caused cancer rates to soar among children and which produced the most ugly looking monsters -- genetically modified by "freedom and democracy"...

The mothers of Falluja and Basra don't have the luxury of some Marion...and their little Frankensteins are not a product of some odd nature's mishap.. no. Their little ones have been planned and conceived in Washington DC and 10 Downing Street. Their are the fruit of the West. The West's labor...and our pangs.

No one will fuss over the Iraqi mothers, nor will they receive the satin gloved support and empathy like Marion did...they will just lie in that delivery room, assuming there is one...and expel one monster after another...made in America and Great Britain.

But you see there is one thing that probably escapes you...these monstrous infants, these deformed babies -- not of nature but of your "civilization" -- are only a reflection of you own ugliness...in themselves these infants are beautiful...and in yourselves, you are just plain hideous.

http://www.countercurrents.org/anwar070510.htm

Fears for crops as shock figures from America show scale of bee catastrophe

The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter

Alison Benjamin
The Observer,
Sunday 2 May 2010

Honey bees are vital insect pollinators, responsible for the healthy development of many of the world’s major food crops. Photograph: David Silverman/Getty Images

Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.

The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.

The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS).

The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honeybee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to the global economy.

Potential causes range from parasites, such as the bloodsucking varroa mite, to viral and bacterial infections, pesticides and poor nutrition stemming from intensive farming methods. The disappearance of so many colonies has also been dubbed "Mary Celeste syndrome" due to the absence of dead bees in many of the empty hives.

US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees, wax and pollen, lending credence to the notion that pesticides are a key problem. "We believe that some subtle interactions between nutrition, pesticide exposure and other stressors are converging to kill colonies," said Jeffery Pettis, of the ARS's bee research laboratory.

A global review of honeybee deaths by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) reported last week that there was no one single cause, but pointed the finger at the "irresponsible use" of pesticides that may damage bee health and make them more susceptible to diseases. Bernard Vallat, the OIE's director-general, warned: "Bees contribute to global food security, and their extinction would represent a terrible biological disaster."

Dave Hackenberg of Hackenberg Apiaries, the Pennsylvania-based commercial beekeeper who first raised the alarm about CCD, said that last year had been the worst yet for bee losses, with 62% of his 2,600 hives dying between May 2009 and April 2010. "It's getting worse," he said. "The AIA survey doesn't give you the full picture because it is only measuring losses through the winter. In the summer the bees are exposed to lots of pesticides. Farmers mix them together and no one has any idea what the effects might be."

Pettis agreed that losses in some commercial operations are running at 50% or greater. "Continued losses of this magnitude are not economically sustainable for commercial beekeepers," he said, adding that a solution may be years away. "Look at Aids, they have billions in research dollars and a causative agent and still no cure. Research takes time and beehives are complex organisms."

In the UK it is still too early to judge how Britain's estimated 250,000 honeybee colonies have fared during the long winter. Tim Lovett, president of the British Beekeepers' Association, said: "Anecdotally, it is hugely variable. There are reports of some beekeepers losing almost a third of their hives and others losing none." Results from a survey of the association's 15,000 members are expected this month.

John Chapple, chairman of the London Beekeepers' Association, put losses among his 150 members at between a fifth and a quarter. Eight of his 36 hives across the capital did not survive. "There are still a lot of mysterious disappearances," he said. "We are no nearer to knowing what is causing them."

Bee farmers in Scotland have reported losses on the American scale for the past three years. Andrew Scarlett, a Perthshire-based bee farmer and honey packer, lost 80% of his 1,200 hives this winter. But he attributed the massive decline to a virulent bacterial infection that quickly spread because of a lack of bee inspectors, coupled with sustained poor weather that prevented honeybees from building up sufficient pollen and nectar stores.

The government's National Bee Unit has always denied the existence of CCD in Britain, despite honeybee losses of 20% during the winter of 2008-09 and close to a third the previous year. It attributes the demise to the varroa mite – which is found in almost every UK hive – and rainy summers that stop bees foraging for food.

In a hard-hitting report last year, the National Audit Office suggested that amateur beekeepers who failed to spot diseases in bees were a threat to honeybees' survival and called for the National Bee Unit to carry out more inspections and train more beekeepers. Last summer MPs on the influential cross-party public accounts committee called on the government to fund more research into what it called the "alarming" decline of honeybees.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has contributed £2.5m towards a £10m fund for research on pollinators. The public accounts committee has called for a significant proportion of this funding to be "ring-fenced" for honeybees. Decisions on which research projects to back are expected this month.

WHY BEES MATTER

Flowering plants require insects for pollination. The most effective is the honeybee, which pollinates 90 commercial crops worldwide. As well as most fruits and vegetables – including apples, oranges, strawberries, onions and carrots – they pollinate nuts, sunflowers and oil-seed rape. Coffee, soya beans, clovers – like alfafa, which is used for cattle feed – and even cotton are all dependent on honeybee pollination to increase yields.

In the UK alone, honeybee pollination is valued at £200m. Mankind has been managing and transporting bees for centuries to pollinate food and produce honey, nature's natural sweetener and antiseptic. Their extinction would mean not only a colourless, meatless diet of cereals and rice, and cottonless clothes, but a landscape without orchards, allotments and meadows of wildflowers – and the collapse of the food chain that sustains wild birds and animals.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/02/food-fear-mystery-beehives-collapse

Saudi-Funded Fox News Rejects Ad Arguing Against Middle East Oil Dependence

Last week, progressive veterans organization VoteVets.org released an ad arguing that “a clean energy climate plan would cut our dependence on foreign oil in half and cut oil profits for hostile nations.” The ad asserts that “every day, Iran gets $100 million richer selling oil around the world and peddling hate.”

While CNN and MSNBC have aired the ad, Fox News is refusing to do so. Politico reports Fox apparently found the ad “too confusing.” Watch the “confusing” ad:

There is nothing confusing about the ad. VoteVets’ assertion that hostile nations profit off our oil dependence is based on a Wonk Room analysis that finds, under the a strong carbon cap regime which restrains U.S. appetite for oil, Iran would lose $1.8 trillion worth of oil revenues over the next forty years — or, over $100 million a day. “If the world moves away from oil dependence, Iran’s regime will no longer be able to rely on petrodollars to stay afloat,” Brad Johnson writes in pretty simple terms.

In a statement issued to ThinkProgress, Richard Smith, a senior adviser to VoteVets who served in Afghanistan, says “the only confusing thing” is why Fox is rejecting the ad:

“There’s nothing confusing about the link between oil and terrorist funding, and even the most dyed-in-the-wool neocons agree on that point. The only confusing thing here is why FOX News would reject an ad that calls on Congress to defund our enemies by finding new sources of energy.”

It’s unclear what Fox News’ motivations are. As Media Matters has documented, the network is a reliable source of misinformation on clean energy reform. Interestingly, Saudi oil tycoon Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns a 7 percent stake in Fox News’ parent company News Corp, making him the largest shareholder outside the family of CEO Rupert Murdoch. But Murdoch has said the he is for a mandatory cap on carbon emissions and believes that Fox News ought to be covering the issue differently.

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/05/05/saudi-fox-clean-energy-ad/

Media Ignore The Fact That Man Who Alerted Police To Failed Times Square Bombing Is A Muslim Immigrant

The chief suspect in the case of the failed Times Square car bombing is Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad, who has confessed to the plot. Much of the media has latched onto Shahzad’s Muslim faith and his Pakistani identity, making inflammatory remarks and suggestions about Muslims and Pakistanis:

– CNN contributor and Redstate.com blogger Erick Erickson complained that the words “muslim” and “Islam” are “not mentioned” enough in stories about Shahzad. He wrote, “It really is pathetic that you’re more likely to see the words “racist” and “Republican” together in the newspaper these days than “terrorism” and “Islam.” [5/4/2010]

– Hate radio host Neal Boortz tweeted, “OMG! The Times Square Bomber is a Muslim! Shocker! Who would have believed it?” [5/4/2010]

– The cover of today’s Washington Post-published Express features a black-and-white photo of Shahzad with the sensationalist headline “MADE IN PAKISTAN” [5/5/2010]

Yet one fact being ignored in the American media’s sensationalist narrative about the failed bombing is that the man who was responsible for police finding the bomb was Muslim. The UK’s Times Online reports that Aliou Niasse, a Senagalese Muslim immigrant who works as a photograph vendor on Times Square, was the first to bring the smoking car to the police’s attention:

Aliou Niasse, a street vendor selling framed photographs of New York, said that he was the first to spot the car containing the bomb, which pulled up right in front of his cart on the corner of 45th street and Broadway next to the Marriott hotel.

“I didn’t see the car pull up or notice the driver because I was busy with customers. But when I looked up I saw that smoke appeared to be coming from the car. This would have been around 6.30pm.”

“I thought I should call 911, but my English is not very good and I had no credit left on my phone, so I walked over to Lance, who has the T-shirt stall next to mine, and told him. He said we shouldn’t call 911. Immediately he alerted a police officer near by,” said Mr Niasse, who is originally from Senegal and who has been a vendor in Times Square for about eight years.

As the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights notes, “South Asian, and Muslim communities may yield useful information to those fighting terrorism. Arabs and Arab Americans also offer the government an important source of Arabic speakers and translators. The singling out of Arabs, South Asians, Muslims, and Sikhs for investigation regardless of whether any credible evidence links them to terrorism will simply alienate these individuals and compromise the anti-terrorism effort.”

Reflecting on Niasse’s good samaritanism Muslim-American author Sumbul Ali-Karamali writes, “It’s somewhat consoling to know that the man who first noticed the smoking Nissan Pathfinder and sought help is also Muslim, a Senegalese immigrant. … I grew up Muslim in this country, with Muslim friends and non-Muslim friends, and there was very little difference between the two groups. We were all American.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/05/05/senagalese-muslim-vendor/