The DISH
Unbossed and
unbought news and information you can use
Vol. 14 No.
4…Dedicated
to the Dialogue on Race…January 24, 2011
Intuit's Vibe
Something's in the Garden
By Phil Vernon
The wind howls before the dawn
Something's in the garden
Look out, see what's going on
Oh, the winds they
blow
In a shroud of secrecy
Something's in the garden
A suicide technology
Oh, it's got to go
The corporate biotech machine
Something's in the garden
Unveils the Terminator gene
Oh, the winds they blow
Inserting a genetic crime
Something's in the garden
Sterile seed at harvest time
Oh, it's got to go
The winds they blow across the fields of every nation
Our seed we been sowing for a hundred generations
Till it's banned in every land we'll fight the Terminator
Oh, no it's got to go!
The desperate poor are locked in the sights...
Of its almighty appetites...
Wearing a Boy Scout disguise...
To hijack the global
food supply...
The winds they blow...
Peasant farmers raise the call
Stand together one and all
Protect the right to save our seed
For justice and food sovereignty
The winds they
blow...
About
Me: This song was written for the Canadian organization Banterminator in
support of the fight for the rights of farmers around the world, as well as for
the future of our green planet. For more about the author and his work, visit www.philvernon.com or email pcvernon@gmail.com.
On the Food Crisis
By Dot
This week's issue takes a cursory
look at the food crisis. Given it is such a broad topic with so much to digest,
we will more than likely revisit it next week and in future issues. We invite
your comments and 
suggestions
as we go forward.
With a growing population of poor
people, food inflation, which is exacerbated by an economic crisis
characterized by historically high long term unemployment, is a serious problem
worldwide. In the
Journalist Andre Damon looks at
why food prices are rising and surmises the reason is a combination of natural
disasters and commodity speculation. Whatever the cause, the precipitous rise
in the prices of staples has led to riots and demonstrations in a number of
nations, including
We also wanted to look anew at
the controversy surrounding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that could
well place mankind at risk. After all, we are what we eat. Yet, here in the
We face an obesity crisis in
Finally, we would be remiss in
not mentioning Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation sparked a revolution. At
age twenty-six, his bio is understandably brief. He was unknown to most of us
prior to his untimely death; but with the collapse of the Tunisian
dictatorship, governments are forced to address aspects of the food crisis in
part because of Bouazizi.
Mohamed Bouazizi
(1984-2011)
"Freedom is expensive and my
brother paid the price of freedom. My brother has become a symbol of resistance
in the Arab world." 
Born Tarek al-Tayyib Muhammad ibn Bouazizi on March 29, 1984 in
He either had a computer science degree or never completed high school, depending on published reports. Born into poverty, from age ten, Bouazizi worked as a street vendor after school to help support his mother and sister. He earned approximately $75 per week selling fruits and vegetables on the streets of Sidi Bouzid.
To secure his merchandise, Bouazizi incurred debt, and on/or around December 17, 2010, he contracted approximately $200 of debt to purchase wares for his vending operation, which basically consisted of a wheelbarrow and scales.
Based on one published report,
street vending is illegal in
Extortion may have been a motive
for the police action. Bouazizi's family has accused authorities of attempting
to extort cash from him, and when he was unable to pay, they confiscated his
weighing scales and tossed aside his fruit and vegetable cart. Other accounts
of the incident indicate Bouazizi was humiliated by a female city official, an
added insult in the Arab world.
Bouazizi
went to the regional government headquarters to plead his case with the
governor. When the effort failed, he left a message for his mother on his
Facebook page asking her to forgive him. The English translation of the message
to his mother written in Arabic stated: "I'm traveling, mother. Forgive
me. Reproach and blame is not going to be helpful. I'm lost and it's out of my
hands. Forgive me if I didn't do as you told me and disobeyed you. Blame the
era in which we live. Don't blame me. I am now going and I will not be coming
back. Notice I haven't cried and no tears have fallen from my eyes. There is no
more room for reproach or blame in the age of treachery in the People's land.
I'm not feeling normal and not in my right state. I'm traveling and I ask who
leads the travel to forget."
On December 17, 2010, after drenching himself in an accelerant, Bouazizi set
himself ablaze. On January 4, 2011, he died of his injuries. Thousands took
part in his funeral procession. Bouazizi's self-immolation ignited protests
against the Tunisian government of strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who
stepped down after 23 years in power.
Bouazizi, whose nickname was Basboosa, is credited with sparking other copycat
self-immolations and other demonstrations against soaring food prices in other
Arab republics. (Sources: www.thestar.com/news/world/article/922279--suicide-protest-helped-topple-tunisian-regime,
www.ibtimes.com/articles/101313/20110114/the-story-of-mohamed-bouazizi-the-man-who-toppled-tunisia.htm#
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Bouazizi
)
Seeds of Suicide
By Uma Shankari
Many food products we consume today contain genetically modified ingredients. A genetically modified organism (GMO) is one that has a foreign gene injected into its embryonic cells. Such "engineered" plants and animals are referred to as GMO's.
GMO technology threatens livelihoods throughout the developing world and locks
farmers into bio serfdom. Farmers have to pay far more for their seeds; they
are prohibited from saving the seeds from the previous harvests as they had
been traditionally doing for thousands of years.
GM crops destroy the micro-organisms of the soil and the food chain that depend on it - weeds, insects, birds and other wildlife, and replace it with genetically uniform crops that are more susceptible to disease. They require the use of highly toxic 'broad spectrum' herbicides designed to wipe out all plants other than the crops that have been engineered to tolerate the herbicide.
Not content with contractual and legal restriction of farmers' rights, biotechnology giants like Monsanto have developed 'suicide seeds': seeds engineered to produce sterile crops. This technology ensures that farmers have no option but to return to the seed companies year after year.
The major agro biotech companies are also developing 'traitor technology', where seeds are engineered to produce negative traits unless treated with the company's own chemicals. The two GM techniques are known as "genetic use restriction technologies" (GURTS).
The genetic engineering process is such that genes can also be transferred between distant species that would never interbreed in nature. Thereafter, secondary, unintended gene transfer can take place from GM crops released into the environment.
Transgenic contamination
(contamination of the natural environment by GM crops) by cross-pollination, by
wind or in other ways is well established. Biotechnology giant Monsanto took
legal action against Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser for allegedly using its GM
canola seeds without paying a $37-per-hectare fee for the privilege. Schmeiser
argued that he never bought Monsanto's GM canola; either the canola seed blew
into his field from a passing truck or his crop might have been contaminated by
pollination, and sued the company for contaminating his fields. But the Court,
in 2001, upheld that Schmeiser violated patent rights held by Monsanto and
ordered him to pay $19,000 in damages for using Roundup Ready canola and cover
Monsanto's court costs of $153,000.
The Court cited the WTO principle of Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual
Property Rights or TRIPs, as its ground. The polluted, not the polluter, must
pay!
Due to the threat of contamination, it is difficult for normal crops or organic
crops to remain free from the impact of GM crops once these have been released.
There are evidences of the grave risks GM foods pose for human and animal
health and for the environment, including creating new strains of antibiotic
resistant bacteria, new viruses from those introduced into the transgenic
plants, causing reactivation of dormant viruses and producing harmful effects
including cancer.
As worldwide concern for food safety grows, it is likely that there will be
increasing demand for organically grown crops and crops which are not
contaminated by GM crops. Therefore we will be surrendering premium world
markets if we allow our crops to be contaminated by GMO's.
The GM crops under field trials in
About
Me: Uma Shankari is a Bangalore-based freelance journalist writing
chiefly on health. You can read more of Shankari's work at http://www.uma-shankari.blogspot.com/.
Manifest
By Ryan Stock
"A fabulous Easter
gift," commented Monsanto Director of Development Initiatives Elizabeth
Vancil. Nearly 60,000 seed sacks of 
hybrid
corn seeds and other vegetable seeds were donated to post-earthquake
According to Chavannes
Jean-Baptiste, coordinator of the Papay Peasant Movement (MPP), "there is
presently a shortage of seed in
"The Haitian government is
using the earthquake to sell the country to the multinationals!" stated
Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, executive director of the Peasant Movement of Papay.
"Welcome to the new earthquake. It's a very strong attack on small
agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds ... and on what is
left of our environment in
Monsanto is also responsible for
other life-changing inventions, such as the crowd-pleasing Agent Orange. The
Vietnamese government claims that it killed or disabled 400,000 Vietnamese
people, and 500,000 children were born with birth defects due to exposure to
this deadly chemical. Up until 2000, Monsanto was the main manufacturer of
aspartame, which researchers in
The genetically-modified seeds
such as those donated and later immolated, cannot be saved from year to year. Some
so-called terminator seeds - the DNA of which is altered so as to not drop seed
after harvest - require the farmer to buy new seeds from Monsanto the following
year in a legally binding contract, instead of collecting the seeds that would
have naturally developed on the plant before its DNA was modified. Other GMO
seed which do drop fertile seed may not be replanted by contract. Diminished
yields, health problems and weakened prospects to buy the next season's
seeds....have driven many rural farmers to poverty, and led to a rash of farmer
suicides in rural
Foreign farmers are not the only
ones affected by these product features and associated business practices. As
of 2007, Monsanto had filed 112 lawsuits against US farmers for alleged
technology contract violations on GMO patents, involving 372 farmers and 49
small agricultural businesses in 27 different states. From these, Monsanto has
won more than $21.5 million in judgments. In estimates based on Monsanto's own
documents and media reports, the multinational corporation appears to
investigate 500 farmers a year.
Monsanto's "Manifest Destiny"-like intentions for
As the new earthquake continues to shake, this seemingly benevolent donation of
vegetable seeds will forever change the paradigm of Haitian agriculture and
thus lead to its further dependence on seeds that poison both the soil they are
grown in and the bodies that consume them and that create financial dependency
on the biotechnology firm Monsanto.
In his 1780 History of European Colonization, Guillame Raynal remarked that
there were signs of an "impending storm." This storm erupted into a
full-fledged monsoon on August 22, 1791, when Dutty Boukman sounded the conch
shell and the slaves of Saint Domingue rose in revolt against the French
imperialists. Under the leadership of Touissant L'Overture and Jean-Jacques
Dessalines, the slave rebels overthrew the imperialist occupation of Napoleon
Bonaparte; and in 1804,
By Annie White
Faced with the Senate's passage
of the 'food safety' bill H.R.2751, previously S. 510, that will put the FDA in
control of the nations 
food
supply, Vermont citizens have declared that the agency and government have no
right to determine or restrict food choices of Vermont citizens. "The
Vermont Resolution for Food Sovereignty" makes a statement to the
The
WHEREAS All people are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and
WHEREAS Food is human sustenance
and is the fundamental prerequisite to life; and
WHEREAS The basis of human sustenance rests on the ability of all people to
save seed, grow, process, consume and exchange food and farm products; and
WHEREAS We the People of Vermont, have an obligation to protect these rights as is the Common and Natural Law; and in recognition of the State's proud agricultural heritage; and the necessity of agricultural, ecological and economic diversity and sustainability to a free and healthy Society;
THEREFORE, Be it resolved, that We The People, stand on our rights under the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution and reject such Federal decrees, statutes, regulations or corporate practices that threaten our basic human right to save seed, grow, process, consume and exchange food and farm products within the State of Vermont; and,
Be
it further resolved, that We The People, shall resist any and all infringements
upon these rights, from whatever sources that are contrary to the rights of the
People of the State of
This Resolution is a clear and timely reminder of our rights as humans on this Earth and citizens of a country that was to be based on the freedom to live full, prosperous lives. The people spoke out heavily against S.510, so fervently that its passage was accomplished in an underhanded, undemocratic way. It was pushed through Congress in a late night session right before Christmas and hidden in a spending bill.
On its website, http://vermontfoodsovereignty.net/,
the Vermont Coalition for Food Sovereignty calls for preemptive action to
protect the small farms of
Now
Global Food Prices (Excerpts)
By Andre Damon
Food prices have hit record highs
due to a string of crop failures together with an upsurge in speculation,
resulting in rising living costs.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization recently announced that the food
price index has now broken a previous record set in 2008, when food prices
nearly doubled over the course of 18 months, leading to popular upheavals in
dozens of countries.
Rising food prices, which have
shot up 25 percent in the past year, have precipitated riots and demonstrations
in
Skyrocketing costs were a
contributing factor in the popular upsurge in
Over the past year, the commodity food price index for corn rose 52 percent, for wheat 49 percent and for soybeans 28 percent. Non-staple cash crops also rose dramatically, with coffee up by 53% and cotton 119%.
The sharp rise in food prices is
partly attributable to a bad crop year, exacerbated by a series of natural
disasters. Droughts in
But the rise in commodity prices is not confined to agricultural products, although the increase is most dramatic there. Brent Crude oil hit nearly $100 per barrel last week, and has increased in price by 26.54 percent from a year ago, when it was trading at $75 per barrel. Copper, meanwhile, is up 30 percent over the past year.
Increased energy prices are a
factor in rising food prices, as agriculture consumes large amounts of fossil
fuels, and petrochemicals are the main component of industrial fertilizers. The
increasing use of ethanol, a corn-based alcohol, in gasoline in the
The rising cost of food and fuel
has led to declining living standards for masses of working and poor people. In
countries like
In the
In some cases, governments have sought to cushion the blow by extending
subsidies or announcing export controls.
While unfavorable crop conditions have played a role in driving up food prices,
this cannot explain the fact that crude oil and copper prices have increased at
the same rate, and in some cases faster than staples.
Speculation, which has played a major role in rising food prices, is itself
dependent on the supply of ready cash. Thus, a major reason for the surge in
global prices is to be found in the Obama Administration's monetary policy. The
US has kept the federal funds interest rate, the rate at which banks charge
each other for loans, as close to zero as possible. At the same time, it has
undertaken unprecedented moves, called "quantitative easing," to
expand the money supply even further. These measures, which come on top of the
vast government bailout that transferred trillions of dollars into US finance
companies, have served to flood the market with cash, fueling speculation.
(Source: www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jan2011/food-j19.shtml)
Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and
Telephone Calls
Email www.reuters.com ...Sarkozy takes G20 case to
Obama as food prices soar...By Emmanuel Jarry French President Nicolas Sarkozy
takes his campaign for greater global food price and currency stability to
Email www.cnn.com...Salvation Army reports increased
need for food...By Brett Zongker...A survey of Salvation Army food programs
across the country released Tuesday shows nearly all saw increased demand over
the past year as donations dwindled. Caseworkers in
Email www.alternet.org... Organic Ag in Jeopardy, USDA Close to Approving GE Alfalfa... By Marion Nestle...The USDA seems to be paving the way for approval of genetically modified (GM) alfalfa with pleas for coexistence and cooperation. These will be needed. Organic alfalfa is the mainstay of organic animal feed. Organic standards exclude GM. But pollen from GM alfalfa transmits GM genes to organic alfalfa. The rapid adoption of GE crops has clashed with the rapid expansion of demand for organic and other non-GE products. This clash led to litigation and uncertainty. Such litigation will potentially lead to the courts deciding who gets to farm their way and who will be prevented from doing so.