Seeds of Destruction, The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

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" Seeds of Destruction, The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation "

Review of F. William Engdahl's Book

_http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va & aid=7716_

(http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va & aid=7716)

 

By Stephen Lendman

 

_Global Research_ (http://www.globalresearch.ca/) , January 2, 2008

 

 

Today, we're all lab rats in an uncontrolled, unregulated mass human

experiment the results of which are unknown. Once GM seeds are introduced to

an

area, the genie is out of the bottle for keeps.

 

 

Reviewing F. William Engdahl's " Seeds of Destruction " - by Stephen Lendman

(Part I)

 

 

Bill Engdahl is a leading researcher, economist and analyst of the New World

Order who's written on issues of energy, politics and economics for over 30

years. He contributes regularly to publications like Japan's Nihon Keizai

Shimbun, Foresight magazine, Grant's Investor.com, European Banker and Business

Banker International. He's also a frequent speaker at geopolitical, economic

and energy related international conferences and is a distinguished Research

Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization where he's a regular

contributor.

 

 

Engdahl also wrote two important books - " A Century of War: Anglo-American

Oil Politics and the New World Order " in 2004. It's an essential history of

geopolitics and the importance of oil. Engdahl explains that America's post-WW

II dominance rests on two pillars and one commodity - unchallengeable

military power and the dollar as the world's reserve currency combined with the

quest to control global oil and other energy resources.

Engdahl's newest book is just out from _Global Research: " Seeds of

Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation " _

(http://globalresearch.ca/books/SoD.html) and subject of this review. It's the

diabolical story of how

Washington and four Anglo-American agribusiness giants plan world domination by

patenting life forms to gain worldwide control of our food supply and why

that prospect is chilling. The book's compelling contents are reviewed below

in-depth so readers will know the type future Henry Kissinger had in mind in

1970 when he said: " Control oil and you control nations; control food and you

control the people. "

Remember also, this cabal is one of many interconnected ones with fearsome

power and ruthless intent to use it - Big Banks controlling the Federal

Reserve and our money, Big Oil our world energy resources, Big Media our

information, Big Pharma our health, Big Technology our state-of-the-art

everything and

watching us, Big Defense our wars, Big Pentagon waging them, and other

corporate predators exploiting our lives for profit. Engdahl's book focuses

brilliantly on one of them. To fully cover its vital contents, this review will

be

in three parts for more detail and to make it easily digestible.

Part I of " Seeds of Destruction "

In 2003, Jeffrey Smith's " Seeds of Deception " was published. It exposed the

dangers of untested and unregulated genetically engineered foods most people

eat every day with no knowledge of the potential health risks. Efforts to

inform the public have been quashed, reliable science has been buried, and

consider what happened to two distinguished scientists.

One was Ignatio Chapela, a microbial ecologist at the University of

California, Berkeley. In September, 2001, he was invited to a carefully staged

meeting with Fernando Ortiz Monasterio, Mexico's Director of the Commission of

Biosafety in Mexico City. The experience left Chapela shaken and angry as he

explained. Monasterio attacked him for over an hour. " First he trashed me. He

let

me know how damaging to the country and how problematic my information was

to be. "

Chapela referred to what he and a UC Berkeley graduate student, David Quist,

discovered in 2000 about genetically engineered contamination of Mexican

corn in violation of a government ban on these crops in 1998. Corn is sacred in

Mexico, the country is home to hundreds of indigenous varieties that

crossbreed naturally, and GM contamination is permanent and unthinkable - but

it

happened by design.

Chapela and Quist tested corn varieties in more than a dozen state of Oaxaca

communities and discovered 6% of the plants contaminated with GM corn.

Oaxaca is in the country's far South so Chapela knew if contamination spread

there, it was widespread throughout Mexico. It's unavoidable because NAFTA

allows

imported US corn with 30% of it at the time genetically modified. Now it's

heading for nearly double that amount, and if not contained, it soon could be

all of it.

The prestigious journal Nature agreed to publish Chapela's findings,

Monasterio wanted them quashed, but Chapela refused to comply. As a result, he

was

intimidated not to do it and threatened with being held responsible for all

damages to Mexican agriculture and its economy.

He went ahead, nonetheless, and when his article appeared in the publication

on November 29, 2001 the smear campaign against him began and intensified.

It was later learned that Monsanto was behind it, and the Washington-based

Bivings Group PR firm was hired to discredit his findings and get them

retracted.

It worked because the campaign didn't focus on Chapela's contamination

discovery, but on a second research conclusion even more serious. He learned

the

contaminated GM corn had as many as eight fragments of the CaMV promoter that

creates an unstable " hotspot. " It can cause plant genes to fragment, scatter

throughout the plant's genome, and, if proved conclusively, would wreck

efforts to introduce GM crops in the country. Without further evidence, there

was

still room for doubt if the second finding was valid, however, and the

anti-Chapela campaign hammered him on it.

Because of the pressure, Nature took an unprecedented action in its 133 year

history. It upheld Chapela's central finding but retracted the other one.

That was all it took, and the major media pounced on it. They denounced

Chapela's incompetence and tried to discredit everything he learned including

his

verified findings. They weren't reported, his vilification was highlighted, and

Monsanto and the Mexican government scored a big victory.

Ironically, on April 18, 2002, two weeks after Nature's partial retraction,

the Mexican government announced there was massive genetic contamination of

traditional corn varieties in Oaxaca and the neighboring state of Puebla. It

was horrifying as up to 95% of tested crops were genetically polluted and " at

a speed never before predicted. " The news made headlines in Europe and

Mexico. It was ignored in the US and Canada.

The fallout for Chapela was UC Berkeley denied him tenure in 2003 because of

his article and for criticizing university ties to the biotech industry. He

then filed suit in April, 2004 asking remuneration for lost wages, earnings

and benefits, compensatory damages for humiliation, mental anguish, emotional

distress and coverage of attorney fees and costs for his action. He won in

May, 2005 but not in court when the university reversed its decision, granted

him tenure and agreed to include retroactive pay back to 2003. The damage,

however, was done and is an example of what's at stake when anyone dares

challenge a powerful company like Monsanto.

The other man attacked was the world's leading lectins and plant genetic

modification expert, UK-based Arpad Pusztai. He was vilified and fired from his

research position at Scotland's Rowett Research Institute for publishing

industry-unfriendly data he was commissioned to produce on the safety of GMO

foods.

His Rowett Research study was the first ever independent one conducted on

them anywhere. He undertook it believing in their promise but became alarmed by

his findings. The Clinton and Blair governments were determined to suppress

them because Washington was spending billions promoting GMO crops and a

future biotech revolution. It wasn't about to let even the world's foremost

expert

in the field derail the effort. His results were startling and consider the

implications for humans eating genetically engineered foods.

Rats fed GMO potatoes had smaller livers, hearts, testicles and brains,

damaged immune systems, and showed structural changes in their white blood

cells

making them more vulnerable to infection and disease compared to other rats

fed non-GMO potatoes. It got worse. Thymus and spleen damage showed up;

enlarged tissues, including the pancreas and intestines; and there were cases

of

liver atrophy as well as significant proliferation of stomach and intestines

cells that could be a sign of greater future risk of cancer. Equally alarming -

this all happened after 10 days of testing, and the changes persisted after

110 days that's the human equivalent of 10 years.

GM foods today saturate our diet. Over 80% of all supermarket processed

foods contain them. Others include grains like rice, corn and wheat; legumes

like

soybeans and soy products; vegetable oils; soft drinks; salad dressings;

vegetables and fruits; dairy products including eggs; meat and other animal

products; and even infant formula plus a vast array of hidden additives and

ingredients in processed foods (like in tomato sauce, ice cream and peanut

butter). They're unrevealed to consumers because labeling is prohibited yet the

more

of them we eat, the greater the potential threat to our health.

Today, we're all lab rats in an uncontrolled, unregulated mass human

experiment the results of which are unknown. The risks from it are beyond

measure,

it will take many years to learn them, and when they're finally revealed it

will be too late to reverse the damage if it's proved GM products harm human

health as independent experts strongly believe. Once GM seeds are introduced to

an area, the genie is out of the bottle for keeps.

Despite the enormous risks, however, Washington and growing numbers of

governments around the world in parts of Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa

now allow these products to be grown in their soil or imported. They're

produced and sold to consumers because agribusiness giants like Monsanto,

DuPont,

Dow AgriSciences and Cargill have enormous clout to demand it and a potent

partner supporting them - the US government and its agencies, including the

Departments of Agriculture and State, FDA, EPA and even the defense

establishment.

World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual

Property Rights (TRIPS) patent rules also back them along with

industry-friendly

WTO rulings like the February 7, 2006 one.

It favored a US challenge against European GMO regulatory policies in spite

of strong consumer sentiment against these foods and ingredients on the

continent. It also violated the Biosafety Protocol that should let nations

regulate these products in the public interest, but it doesn't because WTO

trade

rules sabotaged it. Nonetheless, anti-GMO activism persists, consumers still

have a say, and there are hundreds of GMO-free zones around the world,

including

in the US. That and more is needed to take on the agribusiness giants that

so far have everything going their way.

In " Seeds of Deception, " Jeffrey Smith did a masterful job explaining the

dangers of GM foods and ingredients. Engdahl explains them as well but goes

much further brilliantly in his blockbuster book on this topic. It's the story

of a powerful family and a " small socio-political American elite (that) seeks

to establish control over the very basis of human survival " - future life

through the food we eat. The book's introduction says it " reads (like) a crime

story. " It's also a nightmare but one that's very real and threatening.

This review covers the book in-depth because of its importance. It's an

extraordinary work that " reveals a diabolical World of profit-driven political

intrigue (and) government corruption and coercion " that's part of a

decades-long global scheme for total world dominance. The book deserves vast

exposure

and must be read in full for the whole disturbing story. It's hoped the

material below will encourage readers to do it in their own self-interest and

to

marshal mass consumer actions to place food safety above corporate profits.

Engdahl's book supplies the ammunition to do it and is also a sequel to his

earlier one on war, oil politics and The New World Order and follows

naturally from it. It covers the roots of the strategy to control " global food

security " that goes back to the 1930s and the plans of a handful of American

families to preserve their wealth and power. But it centers on one in

particular

that above the others " came to symbolize the hubris and arrogance of the

emerging American century " that blossomed post-WW II. Its patriarch began in

oil

and then dominated it in his powerful Oil Trust. It was only the beginning as

the family expanded into " education of youth, medicine and psychology, " US

foreign policy, and " the very science of life itself, biology, and its

applications " in plants and agriculture.

The family's name is Rockefeller. The patriarch was John D., and four

powerful later-generation brothers followed him - David, Nelson, Laurance, and

John

D. III. Engdahl says the GMO story covers " the evolution of power in the

hands of an elite (led by this family), determined (above all) to bring the

entire world under their sway. " They and other elites already control most of

it,

including the nation's energy, the US Federal Reserve, and other key world

central banks. Today, three brothers are gone, David alone remains, and he's

still a force at age 92 although he no longer runs the family bank, JP Morgan

Chase. He's active in family enterprises, however, including the Rockefeller

Foundation to be discussed in Part II of this review.

 

__

 

Click to order William Engdahl's

 

 

_Seeds of Destruction,

The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

_ (http://globalresearch.ca/books/SoD.html)

 

 

 

 

 

(http://globalresearch.ca/books/seeds_3.jpg)

F. William Engdahl is a leading analyst of the New World Order, author of

the best-selling book on oil and geopolitics, A Century of War: Anglo-American

Politics and the New World Order,’ His writings have been translated into

more than a dozen languages.

Reviews of Engdahl's Seeds of Destruction

 

 

What is so frightening about Engdahl's vision of the world is that it is so

real. Although our civilization has been built on humanistic ideals, in this

new age of " free markets " , everything-- science, commerce, agriculture and

even seeds-- have become weapons in the hands of a few global corporation

barons and their political fellow travelers. To achieve world domination, they

no

longer rely on bayonet-wielding soldiers. All they need is to control food

production.

 

(Dr. Arpad Pusztai, biochemist, formerly of the Rowett Research Institute

Institute, Scotland)

If you want to learn about the socio-political agenda --why biotech

corporations insist on spreading GMO seeds around the World-- you should read

this

carefully researched book. You will learn how these corporations want to

achieve control over all mankind, and why we must resist... (Marijan Jost,

Professor of Genetics, Krizevci, Croatia)

The book reads like a murder mystery of an incredible dimension, in which

four giant Anglo-American agribusiness conglomerates have no hesitation to use

GMO to gain control over our very means of subsistence...

 

(Anton Moser, Professor of Biotechnology, Graz, Austria).

 

 

CLICK to order William F. Engdahl's book directly from Global Research

 

_Seeds of Destruction,

The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation _

(http://globalresearch.ca/books/SoD.html)

 

_Global Research Articles by F. William Engdahl_

(http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=listByAuthor & authorFirst=F.

William & authorName=Engdahl)

 

__

 

Stephen Lendman is Research Associate of the Centre for Research on

Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at

_lendmanstephen_ (lendmanstephen) .

 

Also visit his blog site at _www.sjlendman.blogspot.com_

(http://www.sjlendman.blogspot.com/) and listen to The Steve Lendman News and

Information Hour

on _www.TheMicroEffect.com_ (http://www.themicroeffect.com/) Mondays at noon

US Central time.