– “Biggest Case In WTO History”: Europe Prepares Legal Challenge Against Trump Border Tax
* * *
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WTO
Canada threatens duties on dozens of iconic US products
– Canada threatens duties on dozens of iconic US products (RT, Oct 22, 2014):
Canada says it may impose import duties on US-produced goods ranging from California wine to ketchup after a WTO ruling that US labeling did not meet international standards.
Canada has published a list of 38 American products that can potentially become subject to additional retaliatory tariffs. The list includes cattle and hogs, as well as a number of symbolic products such as California wine, Vermont maple syrup, Florida orange juice, ketchup and breakfast cereal.
Read moreCanada threatens duties on dozens of iconic US products
India Slams US Global Hegemony By Scuttling Global Trade Deal, Puts Future Of WTO In Doubt
– India Slams US Global Hegemony By Scuttling Global Trade Deal, Puts Future Of WTO In Doubt (ZeroHedge, Aug 1, 2014):
In the last few days a new and curious question has emerged: would India embrace the US/Japan axis while foregoing its natural Developing Market, and BRICS, allies, Russia and China. We now have a clear answer and it is a resounding no, because in what was the latest slap on the face of now crashing on all sides US global hegemony, earlier today India refused to sign a critical global trade dea. Specifically, India’s unresolved demands led to the collapse of the first major global trade reform pact in two decades. WTO ministers had already agreed the global reform of customs procedures known as “trade facilitation” in Bali, Indonesia, last December, but were unable to overcome last minute Indian objections and get it into the WTO rule book by a July 31 deadline. WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo told trade diplomats in Geneva, just two hours before the final deadline for a deal lapsed at midnight that “we have not been able to find a solution that would allow us to bridge that gap.“
‘ROTHSCHILDS THROUGH MONSANTO, GOLDMAN SACHS, EXXON, GOOGLE, OBAMA, NATO, RENZI AND MERKEL PUSH FOR NEW WORLD ORDER’
The following is a comment by reader vjklmno:
ROTHSCHILDS THROUGH MONSANTO, GOLDMAN SACHS, EXXON, GOOGLE, OBAMA, NATO, RENZI AND MERKEL PUSH FOR NEW WORLD ORDER
” WTO: Global trade to gain speed in 2014 and 2015 14 April 2014
…………………
The agency’s director general, Roberto Azevedo, said that just waiting for an automatic increase in trade was not enough.
He called for new trade liberalisation agreements, in particular the negotiations known as the Doha Round. ” http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27025011AMONG THESE NEW TRADE LIBERALISATION AGREEMENTS THERE ARE THE TTIP (TRANSATLANTIC TRADE AND INVESTMENT PARTNERSHIP) AND THE TPP (TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP).
” The threat of the US-EU trade deal http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-6dea-The-threat-of-the-US-EU-trade-deal
Friday 28th Februay 2014
US, EU And Japan Challenge China On Rare Earths At WTO
Flashback:
– Study Finds Mineral Deposits Worth $3 Trillion in Afghanistan
– US, EU and Japan challenge China on rare earths at WTO (BBC News, March 13, 2012):
The US, Japan and the European Union have filed a case against China at the World Trade Organization, challenging its restrictions on rare earth exports.
US President Barack Obama accused China of breaking agreed trade rules as he announced the case at the White House.
Beijing has set quotas for exports of rare earths, which are critical to the manufacture of high-tech products from hybrid cars to flat-screen TVs.
It is the first WTO case to be filed jointly by the US, EU and Japan.
They argue that by limiting exports, China, which produces more than 95% of the world’s rare earth metals, has pushed up prices.
Read moreUS, EU And Japan Challenge China On Rare Earths At WTO
MANIAC FASCISM: New Zealand Food Bill To Make Growing Food A Government Privilege Rather Than A Human Right
– NZ food bill to make growing food a government privilege rather than a human right (Natural News, Dec. 7, 2011):
The God-given human right to freely cultivate food is under attack in New Zealand (NZ) as special interest groups and others are currently attempting to push a “food security” bill through the nation’s parliament that will strip individuals of their right to grow food, save seeds, and even share the fruits of their labor with friends and family members.
In accordance with the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Codex Alimentarius scheme for global food control, the NZ Food Bill, if passed, will essentially transfer primary control of food from individuals to corporations under the guise of food safety. And unless massive public outcry and awakened consciences within the NZ government are able to put a stop to it, the bill could become law very soon.
According to NZ Food Security, a group working to protect the food freedom of New Zealanders, the bill will turn growing and sharing food into a government-granted privilege rather than a human right. It will also make it illegal to distribute any type of food based on the bill’s language. This includes seeds, nutrients, natural medicines, minerals, and even water — without expressed government permission.
You see, agribusiness giants like Monsanto want full control of the food supply, which means putting an end to small-scale agriculture systems that operate “off the grid,” so to speak. This is why they have worked so hard in places like the US to convert conventional, staple crop systems to genetically-modified (GM) ones that are continually reliant upon new seeds and chemical interventions.
As far as enforcement, the NZ bill also authorizes private companies to deploy “Food Safety Officers” that can raid private property without warrant. Not only will these “Food Safety Officers” be permitted to draw weapons against those they are pursuing, but they will also be immune from criminal and civil prosecution for their illegal actions.
The Elite Plan For A New World Social Order
– The Elite Plan for a New World Social Order (Global Research, Oct. 28, 2011):
When the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, in the late 1700s, there was lots of money to be made by investing in factories and mills, by opening up new markets, and by gaining control of sources of raw materials. The folks who had the most money to invest, however, were not so much in Britain but more in Holland. Holland had been the leading Western power in the 1600s, and its bankers were the leading capitalists. In pursuit of profit, Dutch capital flowed to the British stock market, and thus the Dutch funded the rise of Britain, who subsequently eclipsed Holland both economically and geopolitically.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin Wants To Build ‘Eurasian Union’
– Russia’s Putin says wants to build “Eurasian Union” (Reuters, Oct. 4, 2011):
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he wants to bring ex-Soviet states into a “Eurasian Union” in an article which outlined his first foreign policy initiative as he prepares to return to the Kremlin as the country’s next president.
Putin said the new union would build on an existing Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan which from next year will remove all barriers to trade, capital and labor movement between the three countries.
“We are not going to stop there and are setting an ambitious goal — to achieve an even higher integration level in the Eurasian Union,” Putin wrote in an article which will be published in Izvestia newspaper on October 4.
Putin said last month he would run in the March 2012 presidential election and his current public approval ratings show that he is set to win.
Read moreRussia’s Vladimir Putin Wants To Build ‘Eurasian Union’
Censored Ron Paul’s 20/20 ABC News Interview With John Stossel (MUST-SEE!!!)
The videos are a flashback and a must-see.
More about Ron Paul:
– Rep. Ron Paul of Texas Wins CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Again
– Ron Paul 2012 – Can you Hear us Now?
– Ron Paul: ‘Is the Gold Really There? Who Owns It?’
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In the wake of S.510 Fake food safety … it won’t be a matter of what’s for dinner … but will we have dinner?
Related information:
– List of Bribed US Senators To Support Senate Bill S. 510 (‘Food Safety Modernization Act’)
– Unconstitutional Senate Bill S. 510 Vote Delayed Until After Thanksgiving
– Senate Bill S. 510 Food Safety Modernization Act Vote Imminent: Outlaws Gardening And Saving Seeds
Why is “free trade at any expense” reserved only for multi-national corporations? Why is every other sector of the economy supposed to be allowed to engage in a free-for-all at the entire countries expense, but when it comes to family and independent agriculture there are literally hundreds of thousands of regulations, limitations, rules, and requirements, licensing, and forfeiture of rights, spanning multiple agencies who spend the bulk of their funding on “enforcement” of what usually amounts to nothing less than an interference in trade, profit and viability and which many times constitute an open assault on Constitutionally protected property and individual rights.
Source: The PPJ Gazette
I can only imagine the salivating occurring behind the scenes in the District of Criminals, as the corporations and interested parties including the World Trade Organization, Codex Committees and other vested stakeholders anticipate the passage of S.510, the fake food safety bill. Should this bill pass, we as a country will be officially divested not only of our sovereignty but of our independence. No country in the history of the world has survived for long without a strong and independent agricultural sector. Take that away, and the fall of the country soon follows. No nation that cannot, or will not, feed its own people, ever survives. Independent agriculture is and always has been the backbone and the underlying support for economic stability and security. It is this support and security that S.510 seeks to destroy.
S.510 is not about food safety; it is however the last lynchpin in the seizure of food production and supply that was begun under Bush the Lesser. Control the food; control the people.
This same model envisioned in S.510 was used in recent years in Poland. An estimated 60% of Polish farms are now gone. In India, more than 8 million farmers have left their farms as a result of similar systems implemented by the World Trade Organization on behalf of bio-pirates of all kinds. Here in the US an estimated 1/3 of all farms that existed in 2000, have now vanished. We are, according to farmaid.org , losing 3-500 farms and ranches every week as the industrialized corporate machine being driven by congress and its agencies rolls across our land. Food safety never was the issue. Food as a Weapon is another story.
S.510 is set up to increase and subsidize exporting of our food production. With a food crisis building around the world and economists and geo-political prognosticators of all stripes predicting a massive food shortage, why in the world would our congress be contemplating passing a bill that expands and increases exports of our food products? Wouldn’t the rational and logical strategy be:
- to reduce exports,
- stockpile as much grain in strategic reserve as possible, (USDA sold our strategic reserve in 2008)
- strategic reserves of dairy commodities especially in the Western States where USDA claims there is a glut of dairy
- reinforcement of local producers who can keep their surrounding communities supplied with fresh produce and meats
- Subsidies for farmers markets which would not only encourage the entry into produce production but would also help to boost the economies of the communities
- Re-establish the strategic reserves of grains and other commodities and make this irrevocable
- Make export possible only if and when adequate supplies are built up to back up the US
- Once surplus levels are established, allow export only at levels beyond this.
- Limit imports to only those products we cannot produce here, such as various tropical fruits.
Senate Bill S. 510 Food Safety Modernization Act Vote Imminent: Outlaws Gardening And Saving Seeds
This is unconstitutional and violates your basic human right to grow your own food!
This is treason!
“The greatest danger to American freedom is a government that ignores the Constitution.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion…. And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms…. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Your help is needed to halt the tyrannical new “S.510” U.S. Senate bill that could criminalize saving seeds and outlaw backyard garden food production. It is being called “the most dangerous bill in the history of the United States of America.”
(NaturalNews) Senate Bill 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, has been called “the most dangerous bill in the history of the United States of America.” It would grant the U.S. government new authority over the public’s right to grow, trade and transport any foods. This would give Big brother the power to regulate the tomato plants in your backyard. It would grant them the power to arrest and imprison people selling cucumbers at farmer’s markets. It would criminalize the transporting of organic produce if you don’t comply with the authoritarian rules of the federal government.
“It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one’s choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God.” – Dr. Shiv Chopra, Canada Health whistleblower (http://shivchopra.com/?page_id=2)
This tyrannical law puts all food production (yes, even food produced in your own garden) under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security. Yep — the very same people running the TSA and its naked body scanner / passenger groping programs.
This law would also give the U.S. government the power to arrest any backyard food producer as a felon (a “smuggler”) for merely growing lettuce and selling it at a local farmer’s market.
It also sells out U.S. sovereignty over our own food supply by ceding to the authority of both the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Codex Alimentarius.
It would criminalize seed saving (http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/20…), turning backyard gardeners who save heirloom seeds into common criminals. This is obviously designed to give corporations like Monsanto a monopoly over seeds.
It would create an unreasonable paperwork burden that would put small food producers out of business, resulting in more power over the food supply shifting to large multinational corporations.
I encourage you to read more about this dangerous bill at the Food Freedom blog on WordPress: http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/20…
S.510 in more detail:
– Food Safety Bill S. 510: Local Farms Could Be Illegal
Take action now or lose your right to grow your own food
Sign this petition at Citizens for Health:
http://www.citizens.org/?page_id=2312
Do it today! This is really important.
In addition, the Cornucopia Institute recently sent out an urgent call-to-action email containing the following information: (http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/11/a…)
How to protest Senate Bill 510
1) Go to Congress.org and type in your zip code in the box in the upper right hand corner.
2) Click on your Senator’s name, and then on the contact tab for their phone number. You can also call the Capitol Switchboard and ask to be directly connected to your Senator’s office: 202-224-3121.
3) Once connected ask to speak to the legislative staff person responsible for agriculture. If they are unavailable leave a voice mail message. Be sure to include your name and phone number.
Give them this message in support of the “Tester Amendment” which would exempt small farms from S.510:
“I am a constituent of Senator___________. I ask that he/she support the Tester Amendment to the food safety bill. The Tester Amendment will exempt the safest, small, owner-operator farms and food facilities and farmers who direct market their products to consumers, stores or restaurants. Food safety legislation should not create inappropriate and costly regulatory barriers to family farms and the growing healthy food movement in the drive to crack down on corporate bad actors. Please support the Tester Amendment and market opportunities for small and mid-sized family farms, and small food processing facilities.”
You may also wish to explain that you oppose the Food Safety Modernization Act in its entirety, and it is a destructive, freedom-crushing law that will destroy the future of food in America.
Remember, America has already lost control over its money supply to the Federal Reserve (nearly a hundred years ago). America has lost its health due to the medical industry and its profit-from-sickness agenda. Now we may lose our right to grow our own food and save our own seeds if Senate Bill 510 passes.
This is a dangerous, tyrannical law that would thrust the American people into an age of darkness and malnutrition. It would criminalize many of the very people growing our food and turn food production into yet another corporate monopoly.
Please take the time right now to contact your U.S. Senator and voice your strong opposition to this bill.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
by Mike Adams
Source: Natural News
Codex alimentarius is here:
In the US:
“This bill is the triumph of agri-bills”
“It is the industrialization tool for the entire US food supply”
“It brings all of Codex standards and guidelines into implementation”
“This bill means that no farmer can safe seed”
“If it does pass, you and I, our children, our loved ones will suffer and we will die”
In the EU:
– Medicinal Herbs Will Disappear in EU, Big Pharma Wins
– EU Legislation Puts An End To Herbal Medicine As We Know It
UN warned of major new food crisis at emergency meeting in Rome
I have warned you of a major ‘engineered’ food crisis by the elite before.
Environmental disasters and speculative investors are to blame for volatile food commodities markets, says UN’s special adviser
July’s wildfires in Russia have led to a draconian wheat ban, pushing up prices. Photograph: Maxim Shipenkov/EPA
The world may be on the brink of a major new food crisis caused by environmental disasters and rampant market speculators, the UN was warned today at an emergency meeting on food price inflation.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) meeting in Rome today was called last month after a heatwave and wildfires in Russia led to a draconian wheat export ban and food riots broke out in Mozambique, killing 13 people. But UN experts heard that pension and hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds and large banks who speculate on commodity markets may also be responsible for inflation in food prices being seen across all continents.
In a new paper released this week, Olivier De Schutter, the UN’s special rapporteur on food, says that the increases in price and the volatility of food commodities can only be explained by the emergence of a “speculative bubble” which he traces back to the early noughties.
“[Beginning in ]2001, food commodities derivatives markets, and commodities indexes began to see an influx of non-traditional investors,” De Schutter writes. “The reason for this was because other markets dried up one by one: the dotcoms vanished at the end of 2001, the stock market soon after, and the US housing market in August 2007. As each bubble burst, these large institutional investors moved into other markets, each traditionally considered more stable than the last. Strong similarities can be seen between the price behaviour of food commodities and other refuge values, such as gold.”
Read moreUN warned of major new food crisis at emergency meeting in Rome
RED ALERT: Dr. Rima E. Laibow On The Food Safety Bill (S 510): This Bill Eliminates All Local Farming, Organic Farmers and Garden Farmers
“This bill is the triumph of agri-bills”
“It is the industrialization tool for the entire US food supply”
“It brings all of Codex standards and guidelines into implementation”
“This bill means that no farmer can safe seed”
“If it does pass, you and I, our children, our loved ones will suffer and we will die”
Added: 22. August 2010
Dr Rima Laibow MD tells how massive public PUSH BACK has held of the forced industrialization of food bill, S.510 in the US Senate, since last November.
Now the PUSH BACK must continue or we risk the bill being rushed through in September as a “noncontroversial” unanimous consent bill. Action Item at www.healthfreedomusa.org to educate decision makers.
More from Dr. Rima E. Laibow:
– Dr. Rima E. Laibow MD reports from the Codex Committee on Nutrition Labeling
– Dr. Rima E. Laibow on Codex Alimentarius and Food Nazification
– Dr. Rima E. Laibow on the Contamination of the Food Supply & Deadly Antibiotics
– Nutricide – Criminalizing Natural Health, Vitamins, and Herbs
And after you have watched Dr. Rima E. Laibow and read the article below you will know exactly why the Gates Foundation Bought 500,000 Monsanto Shares.
Follow the money!
The Food Safety Modernization Act (S 510) Makes it Illegal To Grow, Share, Trade And Sell Homegrown Food
S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, may be the most dangerous bill in the history of the US. It is to our food what the bailout was to our economy, only we can live without money.
“If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public’s right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes. It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one’s choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God.” ~ Dr. Shiv Chopra, Canada Health whistleblower
It is similar to what India faced with imposition of the salt tax during British rule, only S 510 extends control over all food in the US, violating the fundamental human right to food.
Monsanto says it has no interest in the bill and would not benefit from it, but Monsanto’s Michael Taylor who gave us rBGH and unregulated genetically modified (GM) organisms, appears to have designed it and is waiting as an appointed Food Czar to the FDA (a position unapproved by Congress) to administer the agency it would create – without judicial review – if it passes. S 510 would give Monsanto unlimited power over all US seed, food supplements, food and farming.
History
In the 1990s, Bill Clinton introduced HACCP (Hazardous Analysis Critical Control Points) purportedly to deal with contamination in the meat industry. Clinton’s HACCP delighted the offending corporate (World Trade Organization “WTO”) meat packers since it allowed them to inspect themselves, eliminated thousands of local food processors (with no history of contamination), and centralized meat into their control. Monsanto promoted HACCP.
In 2008, Hillary Clinton, urged a powerful centralized food safety agency as part of her campaign for president. Her advisor was Mark Penn, CEO of Burson Marsteller*, a giant PR firm representing Monsanto. Clinton lost, but Clinton friends such as Rosa DeLauro, whose husband’s firm lists Monsanto as a progressive client and globalization as an area of expertise, introduced early versions of S 510.
S 510 fails on moral, social, economic, political, constitutional, and human survival grounds.
1. It puts all US food and all US farms under Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, in the event of contamination or an ill-defined emergency. It resembles the Kissinger Plan.
2. It would end US sovereignty over its own food supply by insisting on compliance with the WTO, thus threatening national security. It would end the Uruguay Round Agreement Act of 1994, which put US sovereignty and US law under perfect protection. Instead, S 510 says:
COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS.
Nothing in this Act (or an amendment made by this Act) shall be construed in a manner inconsistent with the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization or any other treaty or international agreement to which the United States is a party.
3. It would allow the government, under Maritime Law, to define the introduction of any food into commerce (even direct sales between individuals) as smuggling into “the United States.” Since under that law, the US is a corporate entity and not a location, “entry of food into the US” covers food produced anywhere within the land mass of this country and “entering into” it by virtue of being produced.
4. It imposes Codex Alimentarius on the US, a global system of control over food. It allows the United Nations (UN), World Health Organization (WHO), UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the WTO to take control of every food on earth and remove access to natural food supplements. Its bizarre history and its expected impact in limiting access to adequate nutrition (while mandating GM food, GM animals, pesticides, hormones, irradiation of food, etc.) threatens all safe and organic food and health itself, since the world knows now it needs vitamins to survive, not just to treat illnesses.
5. It would remove the right to clean, store and thus own seed in the US, putting control of seeds in the hands of Monsanto and other multinationals, threatening US security. See Seeds – How to criminalize them, for more details.
6. It includes NAIS, an animal traceability program that threatens all small farmers and ranchers raising animals. The UN is participating through the WHO, FAO, WTO, and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) in allowing mass slaughter of even heritage breeds of animals and without proof of disease. Biodiversity in farm animals is being wiped out to substitute genetically engineered animals on which corporations hold patents. Animal diseases can be falsely declared. S 510 includes the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), despite its corrupt involvement in the H1N1 scandal, which is now said to have been concocted by the corporations.
7. It extends a failed and destructive HACCP to all food, thus threatening to do to all local food production and farming what HACCP did to meat production – put it in corporate hands and worsen food safety.
8. It deconstructs what is left of the American economy. It takes agriculture and food, which are the cornerstone of all economies, out of the hands of the citizenry, and puts them under the total control of multinational corporations influencing the UN, WHO, FAO and WTO, with HHS, and CDC, acting as agents, with Homeland Security as the enforcer. The chance to rebuild the economy based on farming, ranching, gardens, food production, natural health, and all the jobs, tools and connected occupations would be eliminated.
9. It would allow the government to mandate antibiotics, hormones, slaughterhouse waste, pesticides and GMOs. This would industrialize every farm in the US, eliminate local organic farming, greatly increase global warming from increased use of oil-based products and long-distance delivery of foods, and make food even more unsafe. The five items listed – the Five Pillars of Food Safety – are precisely the items in the food supply which are the primary source of its danger.
10. It uses food crimes as the entry into police state power and control. The bill postpones defining all the regulations to be imposed; postpones defining crimes to be punished, postpones defining penalties to be applied. It removes fundamental constitutional protections from all citizens in the country, making them subject to a corporate tribunal with unlimited power and penalties, and without judicial review. It is (similar to C-6 in Canada) the end of Rule of Law in the US.
Obama Gives Key Agriculture Post to Lobbyist of CropLife America Whose Members Include Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and Dow Chemical
See also:
– Monsanto in the White House Garden: One Recess Appointment That’s Toxic (Buzzflash):
And I thought Monsanto had it good in the Bush Administration. But it turns out that Big Ag is never lonely, no matter who’s in control.
Not only has Obama already installed Roger Beachy, a former Monsanto big wig, in charge of policy at the USDA, but CropLife is an equal opportunity corrupter that is hedging its bets in the coming election. In fact, 66 percent of the campaign funds they’ve donated in this election season so far went to Democrats, an increase of about 10 percent over 2008.
Furthermore, Siddiqui gave the maximum individual donation to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008, though not until it was kind of obvious who was going to win. Not that things would be any different if he hadn’t, though. CropLife President Jay Vroom gave the maximum amount to Republican presidential candidate John McCain around that same time in the campaign.
– Obama Gives ‘Pesticide Lobbyist’ Post as Chief Agricultural Negotiator (Huffington Post)
The following article is highly recommended!
“Washington lobbyists haven’t funded my campaign, they won’t run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of working Americans when I am president”.
– Barack Obama
Today, President Obama announced that he will recess appoint Islam A. Siddiqui to the position of Chief Agricultural Negotiator, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Siddiqui is a pesticide lobbyist and Vice President for Science and Regulatory Affairs at CropLife America, an agribusiness lobbying group that represents Monsanto.
Following is a letter sent by 98 organizations to U.S. Senators in opposition to Siddiqui’s appointment, and a fact sheet about him.
Dear Senator:
The following 98 organizations are writing you to express our opposition to the nomination of Islam Siddiqui as Chief Agriculture Negotiator at the office of the United States Trade Representative. Our organizations- representing family farmers, farmworkers, fishers and sustainable agriculture, environmental, consumer, anti-hunger and other advocacy groups-urge you to reject Dr. Siddiqui’s appointment when it comes up for a floor vote, despite the Senate Finance Committee’s favorable report of his nomination on December 23, 2009.
Siddiqui’s record at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and his role as a former registered lobbyist for CropLife America (whose members include Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and Dow), has revealed him to consistently favor agribusinesses’ interests over the interests of consumers, the environment and public health (see attached fact sheet). We believe Siddiqui’s nomination severely weakens the Obama Administration’s credibility in promoting healthier and more sustainable local food systems here at home. His appointment would also send an unfortunate signal to the rest of the world that the United States plans to continue down the failed path of high-input and energy-intensive industrial agriculture by promoting toxic pesticides, inappropriate seed biotechnologies and unfair trade agreements on nations that do not want and can least afford them.
US lawmakers launch push to repeal NAFTA
Mississippi congressman Gene Taylor (D-MS) (2nd R) speaks of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina alongside (L-R) Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-MS), House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on Capitol Hill in Washington, September 15, 2005 file photo. (Reuters)
(Reuters) – A small group of U.S. lawmakers unveiled legislation on Thursday to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement in the latest sign of congressional disillusionment with free-trade deals.
The bill spearheaded by Rep. Gene Taylor, a Mississippi Democrat, would require President Barack Obama to give Mexico and Canada six months notice that the United States will no longer be part of the 16-year-old trade pact.
“At a time when 10 to 12 percent of the American people are unemployed, I think Congress has an obligation to put people back to work,” Taylor said.
He argued NAFTA has cost the United States millions of manufacturing jobs and hurt national security by encouraging companies to move production to Mexico.
The high unemployment rate makes it the “perfect” time to push for repeal even though past efforts have failed, he said.
Climategate: Hacked emails include calls for ‘Earth Government’ as foundation of new world order, splitting of America
– Lord Christopher Monckton on Climategate: ‘They Are Criminals’
One of the leaked climate emails was apparently a press release from “Earth Government” Newsletter dated 27 Mar 2003. The document calls for a ‘democratic’ world government that would amalgamate and reform the prevailing global institutions including the United Nations, IMF, World Bank WTO, NAFTA, FTAA and others “for the good of all.”
It further refers to an “Earth Court of Justice to deal with all aspects of the Governance and Management of the Earth.” The document also makes mention of the “Foundation for the new world order, Earth Government” and “The splitting of America into separate independent states living at peace for the good of all.” Is this a revelation of the true intentions of certain environmental advocates, or just one of many emails in the background of calls to “hide the decline” of global temperatures (despite intense claims of global warming).
It is eerily similar to newly named EU President Herman Von Rompuy’s calls for Copenhagen to establish “global management” of the planet and Queen Elizabeth’s recent declaration during her throne speech at the opening of Parliament that “My government will seek effective global and European collaboration through the G20 and the European Union to sustain economic recovery and to combat climate change, including at the Copenhagen summit next month.”
The bulk of the leaked or hacked climate emails can be found at Wikileaks. If you download the emails and look for email #1048799107.txt you will see it. Thanks to Jonathan at NWObabylon.blogspot.com for the tip.
Below is the email in full:
WTO chief warns of looming political unrest
 The head of the World Trade Organization Pascal Lamy, seen here in November 2008. The global economic crisis could trigger political unrest equal to that seen during the 1930s, the head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) said in a German newspaper interview. (AFP/File/Nicholas Ratzenboeck) |
BERLIN (AFP) – The global economic crisis could trigger political unrest equal to that seen during the 1930s, the head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) said in a German newspaper interview Saturday.
“The crisis today is spreading even faster (than the Great Depression) and affects more countries at the same time,” Pascal Lamy told the Die Welt newspaper.
Questioned about the risks of political instability, Lamy — who wraps up his four-year term as WTO director-general in September — responded that that was “the main danger”.
“This crisis weighs heavily on politics and puts peace in danger,” he said.
“Some democracies are old and sufficiently stable to overcome such problems, (but) others are going to be confronted by unrest and inter-religious and inter-ethnic conflicts.”
He went on to warn against protectionism, saying it would be “wrongly easy” for nations to throw up trade barriers in response to the economic and financial downturn.
PM Putin suggests Russia, China ditch dollar in trade deals
MOSCOW, October 28 (RIA Novosti) – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proposed on Tuesday that Russia and China gradually switch over to national currency payments in bilateral trade, expected to total $50 billion in 2008.
“We should consider improving the payment system for bilateral trade, including by gradually adopting a broader use of national currencies,” Putin told a bilateral economic forum.
He admitted the task would be tough, but said it was necessary amid the current problems with the dollar-based global economy.
Read morePM Putin suggests Russia, China ditch dollar in trade deals
Moscow Dismisses Economic Threats
Attempts to isolate and punish Russia for its military actions in Georgia will backfire, given Russia’s economic muscle and key role in mediating international disputes, senior Russian officials said Friday.
Top officials in President George W. Bush’s administration have said Russia’s continued military presence in Georgia could jeopardize its membership in the Group of Eight and its bid to join the World Trade Organization, among other things.
“We are a big economy today,” said Vladislav Reznik, chairman of the State Duma Financial Markets Committee. “Whether they like it or not, we have to be reckoned with.”
Yevgeny Fyodorov, chairman of the Duma’s Economic Policy and Entrepreneurship Committee, was even more blunt.
“It’s a political bluff,” he said. “It’s an absolute certainty that the Americans won’t [impose any sanctions] because they themselves would suffer.”
Nutricide – Criminalizing Natural Health, Vitamins, and Herbs
The Codex Alimentarius is a threat to the freedom of people to choose natural healing and alternative medicine and nutrition.
Ratified by the World Health Organization, and going into Law in the United States in 2009, the threat to health freedom has never been greater.
This is the first part of a series of talks by Dr. Rima Laibow MD, available on DVD from the Natural Solutions Foundation, an non-profit organization dedicated to educating people about how to stop Codex Alimentarius from taking away our right to freely choose nutritional health.
Source: Google Video
Cops to Use “Top Secret” Weapons on Activists During Conventions
Video from CNN’s American Morning, broadcast July 7, 2008.
As CNN reports (see video), Congress is forking over $100 million for “security expenses” in Denver and St. Paul this summer. CNN’s Ed Lavendera says the types of weapons being purchased are “top secret” and this does not sit well with the ACLU, who is suing both cities to find out how the money is being spent. “In Minnesota where republicans are holding their convention, the ACLU says it’s trying to find out how security money is being spent but law enforcement agencies insist these weapons should be kept secret so they have the upper hand in keeping the convention safe,” explains Lavendera.
In other words, members of both factions of the globalist political party will be safe from agents provocateurs who are routinely dispatched to break a few windows and burn trash in the street in order to give the cops an excuse to attack peaceful demonstrators.
CNN and the corporate media are notorious for ignoring this fact, going back at least to late 1999 during the WTO demonstrations in Seattle. Neil deMause wrote for FAIR in early 2000, “most news outlets ignored the police assaults that preceded the looting, preferring to believe that it was the acts of a few out-of-control protesters that led to the violence, and downplaying police use of force…. numerous eyewitness reports would describe police ignoring vandals while busily assaulting demonstrators who were blockading the entrance to the WTO. The Seattle Times, in its timeline of the WTO protests (12/5/99), noted the first use of pepper spray and rubber bullets on demonstrators at 10 a.m. on November 30, nearly two hours before the first windows were broken.” Peter Cassidy, a police tactics researcher, said at the time that the lack of concern over Seattle police behavior “will lend credibility for other police departments to do the same thing.” In short, “opening your mouth becomes something that exposes you to danger. It exposes you to militarized forms of law enforcement.”
A clip from Alex Jones’ Police State II: The Takeover, Delta Force
As Alex Jones documents in Police State II: The Takeover, Delta Force sponsored and aided so-called “Black Bloc anarchists” in Seattle (see video).
Militarized “law enforcement” continued during the FTAA demonstrations in Miami in November, 2003. Miami Activists Defense (MAD) reported “thousands of militarized police, in full riot gear, including electrified shields, tanks, automatic and semi-automatic weapons, tear gas, rubber bullets and bean bags, violently arresting peaceful demonstrators,” absent any provocation or “direct action” on the part of activists. Kris Hermes, MAD spokesperson, noted that Miami mayor Diaz declared police violence against peaceful demonstrators would be the “model for homeland security,” according to Jennifer Van Bergen.
Woman injured by wooden dowel projectile in Oakland, California, April, 2003.
In April, 2003, in Oakland, California, cops used wooden dowel projectiles and rubber bullets against peaceful antiwar activists (see photo). Oakland cops told the San Jose Mercury News that although the demonstration was peaceful, there were a “few agitators in the crowd,” a claim disputed by witnesses. “I was there from 5 a.m. on, and the only violence that I saw was from the police,” Joel Tena, the constituent liaison for Oakland’s vice mayor, told the newspaper. “What happened today was very surprising. It seemed the police were operating under the assumption that they were not going to let any kind of protest happen.”
If sincere “agitators” are not present, the cops are often obliged to produce them, as they did during an anti-globalist demonstration in Montebello, Quebec, last year. “Police officials tried to justify the extraordinary measures deployed at Montebello by claiming they were needed to control ‘extremist’ demonstrators and prevent them from ‘overwhelming’ conference security forces,” writes François Tremblay. “In fact, video images reveal a long-established police practice, that is, the use of agent provocateurs to provide a pretext for a brutal intervention by riot police against anti-government demonstrators and still further restrictions on the right to protest and other basic democratic rights.”
In fact, “restrictions on the right to protest and other basic democratic rights” is the point, as the globalists are sincerely worried about citizens resisting the plan to turn the world into a “free trade” labor gulag based on the China model.
Read moreCops to Use “Top Secret” Weapons on Activists During Conventions
Crisis talks on global food prices
A child carries a tray of bread in Cairo. Photograph: Nasser Nuri/Reuters
World leaders are to meet next week for urgent talks aimed at preventing tens of millions of the world’s poor dying of hunger as a result of soaring food prices.
The summit in Rome is expected to pledge immediate aid to poor countries threatened by malnutrition as well as charting longer-term strategies for improving food production.
Hosted by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, it will hear calls for the establishment of a global food fund, as well as for new international guidelines on the cultivation of biofuels, which some have blamed for diverting land, crops and other resources away from food production.
The urgency of the meeting follows historic spikes in the price of some staple foods. The price of rice has doubled since January this year, while the cost of dairy products, soya beans, wheat and sugar have also seen large increases.
The world’s urban poor have been hit hardest, sending a wave of unrest and instability around the world. Thirty-seven countries have been hit by food riots so far this year, including Cameroon, Niger, Egypt and Haiti.
The Rome summit is the first of a series of high-level meetings aimed at tackling what many leaders now see as a much bigger threat to international stability than terrorism.
A fortnight after the UN meeting, the EU council will focus much of its time on the food crisis. A ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation in late June will make a last-ditch attempt in Geneva at agreeing the lowering of international trade barriers, with the aim of cutting food prices and making it easier for farmers in poor countries to export their produce.
Food and climate change will also be the twin top themes of the G8 summit in Japan in early July, and then in September a UN summit will attempt to put the world back on course towards meeting the millennium development goals, agreed eight years ago, one of which was the halving of the number of the world’s hungry.
How Japan Helped Ease the Rice Crisis
Prices quickly fell on Tokyo’s call to tap into its huge reserves. But how did the stash get so big, and why does rice-rich Japan import the staple?
With prices now falling, the global rice crisis seems to be subsiding. That’s thanks in part to a policy announcement by a Japanese bureaucrat. On May 19, Japan’s Deputy Agriculture Minister, Toshiro Shirasu, said that Tokyo would release some of its massive stockpile of rice to the Philippines, selling 50,000 tons “as soon as possible” and releasing another 200,000 tons as food aid. The first shipment could reach the Philippines by late summer. Shirasu also left open the possibility of using more of its reserves to help other countries in need.
To understand Japan’s role in deflating the rice market, it helps to visit the warehouses rimming Tokyo Bay. It’s here in temperature-controlled buildings that Japan keeps millions of 30-kilogram vinyl bags of rice that it imports every year. Tokyo doesn’t need rice from the outside world: The country’s heavily subsidized farmers produce more than enough to feed the country’s 127 million people. Yet every year since 1995, Tokyo has bought hundreds of thousands of metric tons of rice from the U.S., Thailand, Vietnam, China, and Australia.
A Rice Imbalance
Why does Japan buy rice it doesn’t need or want? In order to follow World Trade Organization rules, which date to 1995 and are aimed at opening the country’s rice market. The U.S. fought for years to end Japanese rice protectionism, and getting Tokyo to agree to import rice from the U.S. and elsewhere was long a goal of American trade policy. But while the Japanese have been buying rice from farms in China and California for more than a decade, almost no imports ever end up on dinner plates in Japan. Instead the imported rice is sent as food aid to North Korea, added to beer and rice cakes, or mixed with other grains to feed pigs and chickens. Or it just sits in storage for years. As of last October, Japan’s warehouses were bulging with 2.6 million tons of surplus rice, including 1.5 million tons of imported rice, 900,000 tons of it American medium-grain rice.