Arun Shrivastava CMC

This is a global emergency

No bombs have been dropped in this war. Instead, the aggressors have chosen two weapons that kill silently, slowly. Those weapons are deliberate contamination of India’s seeds with genetically engineered organisms and radioactive contamination of around 400 million people in India. The aggressors are: the United States Government and the multinational seeds companies [chiefly Monsanto and its Indian partners]. Other Ag-biotech firms are not far behind.

The United States Government, Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Dow, Bayer and a few others comprise a group that should rightly be called the mega criminal corporation; this one single group has the wherewithal to decimate world civilization as we have known and the process of decimation is on. That group includes Indian officials: without their support this war on Indians could not have taken place. Perhaps the same story of government officials colluding with these criminals has been repeated in nearly every country on planet earth.

People can live without a house, car, or medicines; none can survive without food and water. But if seeds are contaminated, we perish as a nation, as a civilization. Therefore, genetically engineered seeds should be treated as weapons of mass destruction exactly as depleted uranium contamination which destroys humans at genetic level: both are weapons of mass, indiscriminate, destruction. And the aggressors should be treated as war criminals.

In this paper I shall describe the true nature of the crime and why the rest of the world, including the people of the United States of America, must charge this group with use of weapons of mass destruction [WMD] and crimes against humanity. Each nation must do the same: charge the criminals, bring them to trial in their respective countries, and hang them. Until we do this, the mega criminal corporation is unlikely to stop its nefarious deed of destroying the world.

What is going on?

In my last article titled “GM buccaneers destroy India’s seeds” [http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=SHR20061221&articleId=4230]

I had said that certain GM crops- including Bt rice, Bt Brinjal, Bt Okra, Bt Tomato, and Bt Potato- are undergoing open field trials at some locations. Evidences submitted in the Supreme Court of India in support of the Writ Petition 206 of 2005, to stop open field trials of genetically engineered seeds, subsequently show that 151 different crops are undergoing trials at over 1500 locations all over India. Evidences have further been submitted that Delhi University is conducting open field trials with terminator seeds of mustard crop, which is illegal in India. The mustard plants have already flowered and contamination of non-GM mustard can’t be stopped. The Genetic Engineering Approvals Committee [GEAC], an inter-ministerial body that oversees issues of biosafety in India, has failed to safeguard our health and stands heavily indicted.
GM seeds, pollens and plants, blown over by wind have contaminated neighboring lands as happened in the fields of Percy Schmeiser, a Canadian farmer. Percy was in Delhi on 6th February to talk on his experience with Monsanto’s blackmail of North American farmers. His seed stocks are decimated.

Genetically engineered seeds and foods

Seeds are nature’s creation, God’s gift to mankind. Farmers all over the world develop and save seeds for themselves and neighbours so that they could feed the world healthy food. The truth is that the best seeds have been developed by farmers themselves; the lie is that seeds are developed by multinational companies and agriculture scientists.

Genetic engineering [GE] is a technology that allows patenting of seeds; it has no other purpose. The truth is that neither these seeds increase yield nor do they enhance nutritive content of foods. The lie is that they increase yield by reducing crop losses due to pest attacks or help plants withstand vagaries of weather: both claims are spurious and based on fudged facts. But these patented seeds ensure huge profits for the multinational corporations.

Multinational companies do not own something that nature has given us, yet they are doing exactly this with full support of the US and many European Governments. Every Government is being systematically forced to approve GE seeds and GM foods in utter disregard for biosafety. Whilst it is possible to reverse chemical pollution, biological pollution replicates itself in the environment. There is no known method to reverse the process. And these seeds and foods can alter genetic purity of species and transmutate in ways that are unknown.

Genetic engineering is an imperfect technology. It is a cell invasion technology through which inter-specie barrier is transcended. For instance, nature has devised mechanisms that make a fish work as fish and a tomato work as tomato. What GE technology does is transfer the selected traits of one specie [for example ability to withstand low temperature in a fish] to another [say for example tomato] so that the engineered specie [tomato] withstands cold temperature. However, in the complex world of nature, this type of invasion of cell and gene manipulation can wreak havoc. For example Bt cotton seed contains the genes of bacillus thuringiensis [Bt] that makes a cotton plant behave like pesticide because it kills certain pests that attack cotton plants. Exactly the same transformation takes place when a farmer uses Bt rice or Bt Okra, or any seeds containing Bacillus thuringiensis. Effectively, the plant itself behaves like a pesticide whether cotton [cash crop] or any food crop.

And this is the crux: the corporations and colluding government officials want us to eat food that actually works in nature as pesticide. In order to obtain approvals for human consumption, these criminals claim that GE foods are “substantially equivalent” yet in order to ensure profits for themselves the same criminals want the world to believe that their products are “quite different” worthy of a patent protection! Did these criminals invent the seeds in the first place? Monsanto already believes it “invented the pig”. Not only the pigs, soon Monsanto will stake a claim that it invented us humans and owns us because their proprietary genes somehow got into our genetic structure. According to the decision of the Canadian Supreme Court, in Percy Schmeiser’s case, “it does not matter how it got there…..!” And it does not matter whether I want it in my body or not? Percy did not want GMOs in his field, but when the fields got contaminated against his wishes, the Court ordered him to settle! Even Canadian Courts are working for Monsanto, neck deep in Monsanto engineered muck!

What Genetically Engineered seeds do?

Natural Seeds will be virtually extinct. Genetically Engineered seeds contaminate our food chain through cross pollination. Once natural plants and seeds are contaminated, they just can’t be decontaminated. Trans-specie contamination is also an established fact: for example a genetically modified rice plant can contaminate other plants and trees and soil as much as other rice plants. It gives rise to super weeds. Even natural water bodies have been contaminated. It means “containment” is impossible. Our natural environment and foods will be contaminated in PERPETUITY.

This technology will utterly destroy India’s agriculture and rural economy and decimate India’s mega-biodiversity and seeds heritage gained for us by our farmers over 10,000 years of agriculture. Monsanto is not even 10 decades old and the US Government about 22.

What Genetically Engineered foods can do to us?

Ultimately, untimely death, which means the corporations are creating conditions to kill us. Foods made from GE food crops are a threat to health and life. Animal studies show severe damage to vital organs [liver, kidney, alimentary canal], growth of cancerous cells, and damaged sperm, among other debilitating health impacts. The technology was introduced without long term impact assessment on human and animal health in the US in early 1990s and is responsible for a major health catastrophe. In India it will destroy human and animal population. Cattle grazing on Bt cotton fields developed unknown symptoms and died. How humans will die is not even known because there is no protocol for testing for, say Bt toxins. The companies and the Governments [state as well as central] have completely ignored issues of health and biosafety. For this reason, the decision of the Indian Government to allow open field trials remains intriguing, highly irresponsible and a crime against humanity.

Why India is a prime target

India is world’s largest producer of fruits, second largest producer of vegetables and milk and is predicted to become the world’s largest exporter of non-GM agricultural products within a decade unless genetic contamination destroys the bio-diversity and sustainability of India’s food & feed crops. This potential market power is the greatest threat to US and European food multinationals and attempts to contaminate non-GM food and feed crops is part of that strategy to destroy India and South Asia’s emerging dominance as non-GM food supplier.

India comprises a large market for biotech based products but most of these products are imported from US and European firms. The Indian biotech industry was worth US$2.44 billion sales in 2001. Of this $1.5 billion (about 60%) was accounted for by health biotech, with agricultural & veterinary accounting for 20% each. Sales are expected to reach about US$ 9.7 billion, roughly four times its current size, by 2020.

70% of India’s seeds’ sales come from farmer bred seeds, 26% from those bred in publicly financed institutions, and only 4% from researched hybrids. At present, out of an estimated 400-odd seed companies in the country, only 18 belong to the public sector and 10 to the cooperative sector. The remaining units are established in the private sector, of which, about 25 to 30 are in the large private sector, while over 300 are medium and small units. The dominant player is Mahyco, a Monsanto joint venture, but it sells Monsanto’s seeds of deception.

A large number of unorganized family owned units remain a typical feature of the Indian seed industry. About 400 organizations are doing commercial research on agriculture: 200 research labs, 150 companies and 50 service firms. Medical foods and nutraceuticals are also under development. Given their expertise, market standing, and the world-wide rapid increase in demand for organic/natural foods, Indian seed companies have the potential to grow into trans-national corporations, with direct investments, joint ventures, and licensing arrangements to produce Indian-bred cultivars in other countries. This scenario threatens the market power of the criminals.

Contamination across species

In the 6th February meeting of farmers from all over India organized by Navdanya [a Delhi based NGO], farmers came out with observations on probable impact of Bt cotton seeds that [a] traditional broad-leaf [Peepal (Ficus religiosa) and Bargad (Ficus bengalensis)] and medicinal trees [like Neem, Azadiracta indica] are dying, [b] women are reaching menopause at as young an age as 30 in Punjab, and [c] goats and sheep grazing on farms growing GE crops have died. Now, some of these observations need to be scientifically validated, but which scientist would do it when nearly all Government scientists have sold their souls to the gang of mega criminals? Has the ICMR woken up to the frenzied killing of corporate piranha?

Hiding seeds in VAULTS?

The plan is to store 10,000 years of mankind’s most precious heritage in a vault in Svalbard, Norway.

It is very puzzling why the Government of India, through its Ministry of Agriculture, is supporting a “natural seeds bank” to be contained in this VAULT in Norway, which is also supported by multinational chemicals & biotech seeds companies such as DuPont and Syngenta. Can’t the Government of India simply stop contamination of seeds and financially support our farmers to protect their seeds? Or is there something more sinister that we don’t know?

[http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Daily/skins/TOI/navigator.asp?Daily=CAP&login=fred1951&AW=1171806266984] The website requires one to be a subscriber for accessing the e-newspaper. For readers’ convenience, I have pasted the graphics above.]

The Doomsday Seed Vault has nothing to do with an asteroid hitting the earth or even a nuclear war, as claimed by head of the project. If an asteroid large enough to destroy the normal ecological balance hit the earth, we are finished anyway, and that asteroid can also hit Svalbard. A nuclear war on Iran is already under advanced stage of planning by none other than the US administration. Millions of seeds that rightly belong to farming communities should ideally be saved by the communities themselves, as has been the tradition worldwide, and protected by their respective governments.

Svalbard is the safest option because of it’s remoteness from the main battleground for resource wars now raging all over the world, including India. Seeds need to be stored at low temperature to prevent germination and Svalbard is in the Arctic Circle. As Rick Weiss says, “The design bespeaks an Armageddon mentality.” See Rick Weiss report here: http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/arctic-vault-protects-the-seeds-of-life/2006/06/19/1150701485134.html

Therefore, the ostensible reason for selecting Svalbard for storing seeds has two secret purposes: [a] majority of agrarian nations are either already contaminated or are in the process of being deliberately contaminated as part of the global domination strategy of the criminals, [b] once the population is culled to the targeted level, these seeds would be released to surviving farmers under total control and direction of the criminals.

Clive James claims that over 100 million acres are under GM cultivation of food and feed crops. The world map of GM crops is available at ISAA web site. While Clive’s figures are disputed by ISIS-UK, the determination of big biotech firms to contaminate world’s seeds would ensure utter decimation of our farms and forests and birds, the bees and the huge microcosm within the living soil.

Why genetic contamination has been forced on India?

The National Security memo 200 [NSSM#200] piloted by Henry Kissinger in 1974, identified growing population in the Asia, Africa and Latin America as threat to US security. The genesis of Kissinger’s thesis lies in King George VI’s advisory to control population in British colonies and it is not surprising that India started its family limiting programme way back in 1952, within five years of gaining independence. Let me quote from McCauley why it has always been the core strategic issue of western elite to destroy resource rich South Asia:

“I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar or who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values & people of such calibre, that do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage.” [Lord McCauley in his speech of Feb 2, 1835, British Parliament]

People are the most important resource. It was McCauley who started the process of culturally enslaving India. Economic enslavement followed. The high quality of India’s population was reduced to emaciated, undernourished, pauperized millions over the next 12 decades, say six generations. During this period, the population of the sub-continent was split along caste and religious lines with competing political ambitions encouraged by the rulers, eventually leading to trifurcation of the subcontinent into India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Kashmir will follow unless we stop it. This population did not mean anything to the British: we were cheap, disposable labour, exactly in the same manner that the British and American ruling classes use their soldiers as disposable dregs today in their illegal wars [“Dumb, stupid soldiers” in Kissinger’s language]. The economic and cultural enslavement was further strengthened after India became independent precisely because the moral responsibility now lay with the “independent Indian Government” no more a ‘white man’s burden! The enslavement continues without being “white man’s burden;” it is now brown man’s burden, the likes of Chidambaram, Manmohan, Montek, Karat and Sita, and the Madam, the only white man carrying the flag of the former rulers.

The politics of population growth

It is well known fact that birth control and sterilization programs are not working well in India. Few policy planners have the political acumen or will, or marketing talent, to convince rural people that small family can [and do] improve quality of life substantially. However, they have never factored in the ground reality in India’s 600,000 villages. These villages are stratified vertically into caste groups and horizontally along religious lines. These social sub-groups live in homogenous clusters but all are part of the lowest tier of constitutional body called Village Council [Gram Panchayat]. The caste and religious groups compete for political control over the Village Council because these councils receive substantial development fund every year. The competing groups or coalitions all seek to control that resource for the benefit of their respective communities. In a village comprising 300 to 2000 households, there is real danger for any group of getting swamped by a coalition of the competing power groups. There is powerful political incentive to expand household and community size and all social and political tensions start here and are reflected at national level. This fact is little discussed in the mainstream media because the issue is politically loaded, hence incorrect, given the dominant pseudo-secular milieu.

However, instead of working on alternatives, like the ones enunciated in the International Conference on Population and Development [ICPD, Cairo, 1994], for example, access to quality education, sustainable habitat, access to quality healthcare, clean water, sanitation and a holistic safety net, from birth to death, under community managed systems, a general apathy within the bureaucracy and political class was established decades ago. Incentives offered by the US government to the Indian ruling elite by way of bribes, admission to children in prestigious colleges, positions that are supported by US Government or MNCs’ funds have also played a role in the widespread indifference towards people’s problem. ‘Keep the people under servile subjugation, in perpetuity!

Realizing that population control programs are failing in the newly industrializing countries [NICs], U.S. Foreign Policy progressively became more covert, vicious and deadly. The Indian ruling elite has been quietly supporting this US agenda of depriving Indians of their assets [the loot of land through SEZs is a classic example] and mass culling, a far less tedious option. Effectively, the Government of India has been bribed into murdering its own citizens.
Through the duplicity of the US and Indian Governments, the Indian population has become the target of a deadly and demonic form of US depopulation policy – involving both bio-weapons and radiation. These weapons are: [a] Genetically engineered seeds and deliberate contamination of India’s foods, and [b] Depleted Uranium [DU] contamination of entire western India. [I shall deal with HIV-AIDS separately because that is another instrument of US depopulation policy being used at cellular level]

Depleted Uranium blowing off the Himalayas, over Pakistan and the oil rich sands of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Gujarat, is contaminating the northern half of India and the Himalayan headwaters of nine major rivers of southeast Asia. Heavy grid and carpet bombing with depleted uranium by the U.S. military, on the eastern side of Afghanistan beginning in 2001, guaranteed heavy contamination in areas where deep snows in the mountainous regions provide water for Pakistan and parts of western [central and eastern] India. By contaminating vital water supplies in vast regions with radioactive contaminants, a secret and invisible low level nuclear war is being carried out against South Asians. This low level radiation undetectable with conventional means will mutilate the DNA of all exposed living things. This is not just a war against people, it is a war against the environment. Few living things will escape the slow radioactive poisoning which mutilates DNA, and is passed on to all future generations.” [Leuren Moret, From Hiroshima to Iraq – 61 Years of Uranium Wars:A Suicidal, Genocidal, and Omnicidal Course]

I have estimated that 21 national capitals and about 957 million people living in these 21 countries are contaminated with depleted uranium. It is blowing in the wind; we are breathing it right now, this moment. How it will kill us, or maim us, will be apparent soon when the over 90 different types of illnesses destroy us, including multiple cancers within the same person, a gift of the US Government to the people of South and West Asia.

The US Government is not only destroying India’s population, but of entire South and West Asia. Indian Government’s silence on unilateral US action in Iraq and the impending US nuclear attack on Iran [which will kill over 35 million Iranians, Afghans, Pakistanies and Indians within a few weeks] strongly indicates complicity in this planned genocide.

Conclusion:

INDIA AND SOUTH ASIA IS SET UP FOR DEPOPULATION. The Indian Government does not want that we live a healthy life. Therefore, we need facilities for detecting GM-toxins and DU induced illnesses, which we do not have.

We have no option but to declare a NATIONAL EMERGENCY, “people’s emergency”, in our respective countries, and in India. We have natural right to demand complete ban over GMOs and penal action against those who deliberately contaminate our farms and forests. We have a right to ask questions why biological and radiological contaminations were allowed. The Indian officials are complicit and, rightly, they should be charged with treason and tried for that ultimate crime called genocide. So should US officials. And so should the officers of Monsanto and others, exactly as the goons were tried at Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2007/03/22/the_silent_war_on_the_people_of_india