"About one-quarter of the world's biomass has already been commodified"

Who Owns Nature?
13 Nov, 2008

New report warns of corporate concentration, commodification of nature; highlights global resistance grounded in "Food Sovereignty"

ETC Group today releases a 48-page report, "Who Owns Nature?" on corporate concentration in commercial food, farming, health and the strategic push to commodify the planet's remaining natural resources.

In a world where market research is becoming increasingly proprietary and pricey, ETC Group's report names names, discloses market share and provides top 10 industry rankings up and down the corporate food chain. Not all the corporations identified in ETC Group's new report are household names, but collectively they control a staggering share of the commercial products found on industrial farms, in our refrigerators and medicine cabinets.

An international advocacy organization based in Canada, ETC Group has been monitoring corporate power in the industrial life sciences for the past 30 years. The report reveals that:

• From thousands of seed companies and public breeding institutions three decades ago, 10 companies now control more than two-thirds of global proprietary seed sales
• From dozens of pesticide companies three decades ago, 10 now control almost 90% of agrochemical sales worldwide
• From almost 1,000 biotech start-ups 15 years ago, 10 companies now account for three-quarters of industry revenues
• The top 10 pharmaceutical companies control 55% of the global drug market

With collapsing systems - eco, climate, food and financial - as the backdrop, Who Owns Nature? warns that, with engineering of living organisms at the nano-scale (a.k.a. synthetic biology), industry is setting the stage for a corporate grab that extends to all of nature.

"About one-quarter of the world's biomass has already been commodified," explains ETC Group's Pat Mooney. "With extreme genetic engineering, we're seeing new corporate strategies to capture and commodify the three-quarters of the world's biomass that has, until now, remained beyond the market economy."

Advocates of synthetic biology - the creation of designer organisms built from synthetic DNA - are promising a post-petroleum future where fuels, chemicals, drugs and other high-value products depend on biological manufacturing platforms fueled by plant sugars. In the 21st century "sugar economy," industrial production will be based on biological feedstocks (agricultural crops, grasses, forest residues, plant oils, algae, etc.) whose sugars are extracted, fermented and converted into high-value products. Synthetic microbes will become "living chemical factories" that require massive quantities of plant biomass. ETC Group warns that corporations are poised to appropriate and further commodify biological products and processes in every part of the globe - as well as destroy biodiversity, deplete soil and water and displace marginalized farmers.

ETC Group's report highlights similarities between the current financial and food crises. "Corporate-controlled food systems, suffering from decades of deregulation, have resulted in a cornucopia of calamities making us sicker, fatter and more vulnerable," says ETC's Research Director Hope Shand. Ongoing food contamination scandals, the global obesity burden and ocean "dead zones" caused by fertilizer pollution are among the food chain disasters cited in Who Owns Nature? "Unhealthy and hazardous food products are constant reminders of a corporate food chain broken to bits," adds Shand.

Governments are working hand-in-hand with corporations to deny the root causes of the crises and sidestep structural reforms. "Despite the implications for democracy and human rights, no international body exists to monitor global corporate activity and no UN body has the capacity to monitor and evaluate emerging technologies," says ETC Group's Kathy Jo Wetter. "The ongoing food emergency and imploding global economy testify to the need for monitoring and oversight of corporations, as well as social control of powerful new technologies."

Who Owns Nature? reports on daunting trends in corporate concentration and technology convergence, but it also points to a very different reality and a powerful contrast to the corporate-controlled life sciences. Although a single company - Monsanto - accounts for almost one-quarter of proprietary seed sales, about three-quarters of the world's farmers routinely save seed from their harvest and grow locally-bred varieties. Wal-Mart may be the world's largest buyer and seller of retail food, but 85% of global food is consumed close to where it is grown - much of it outside the formal market system.

"There is vast and growing resistance to the dislocation and devastation caused by the agro-industrial food system," points out Silvia Ribeiro of ETC Group. "In the global struggle for Food Sovereignty, the playing field isn't level, but the scope of resistance is massive - peasant farmers, fisher people, pastoralists and allied civil society and social movements are fighting for locally controlled and socially just food and health systems."


To download the full report: Download PDF (125 KB)

ETC Group is an international civil society organization based in Ottawa, Canada. We conduct research, education and advocacy on issues related to the social and economic impacts of new technologies on marginalized peoples - especially in the global South. We look at issues from a human rights perspective but also address global governance and corporate concentration. All ETC Group publications are available free of charge on our website: www.etcgroup.org

AIDS Inc.

Giving voice to dissenting opinions countering prevalent orthodox views concerning AIDS. Perhaps their concerns need to be adressed more fully.


AIDS Inc. -- Gary Null (2007)




Bayer exposed




Bayer Sells AIDS-Infected Drug Banned in U.S. in Europe, Asia - Unearthed documents show that the drug company Bayer sold millions of dollars worth of an injectable blood-clotting medicine -- Factor VIII concentrate, intended for hemophiliacs -- to Asian, Latin American, and some European countries in the mid-1980s, although they knew that it was tainted with AIDS. Bayer knew about the fact that the drug was tainted and told the FDA to keep things under wraps while they made a profit off of a drug that infected its patients. If these allegations are true, then both Bayer and the FDA are at fault for this catastrophe. FDA regulators helped to keep the continued sales hidden, asking the company that the problem be ''quietly solved without alerting the Congress, the medical community and the public,'' according to the minutes of a 1985 meeting.



AIDS - Controversy

• Dr. Kary Mullis, Biochemist, 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry:

"If there is evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There is no such document." (Sunday Times (London) 28 nov. 1993)

• Dr. Heinz Ludwig Sänger, Emeritus Professor of Molecular Biology and Virology, Max-Planck-Institutes for Biochemy, München. Robert Koch Award 1978:

"Up to today there is actually no single scientifically really convincing evidence for the existence of HIV. Not even once such a retrovirus has been isolated and purified by the methods of classical virology." (Letter to Süddeutsche Zeitung 2000)

• Dr. Serge Lang, Professor of Mathematics, Yale University:

"I do not regard the causal relationship between HIV and any disease as settled. I have seen considerable evidence that highly improper statistics concerning HIV and AIDS have been passed off as science, and that top members of the scientific establishment have carelessly, if not irresponsible, joined the media in spreading misinformation about the nature of AIDS." (Yale Scientific, Fall 1994)

• Dr. Harry Rubin, Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California at Berkeley:

"It is not proven that AIDS is caused by HIV infection, nor is it proven that it plays no role whatever in the syndrome." (Sunday Times (London) 3 April 1994)

• Dr. Richard Strohman, Emeritus Professor of Cell Biology at the University of California at Berkeley:

"In the old days it was required that a scientist address the possibilities of proving his hypothesis wrong as well as right. Now there's none of that in standard HIV-AIDS program with all its billions of dollars." (Penthouse April 1994)

• Dr. Harvey Bialy, Molecular Biologist, former editor of Bio/Technology and Nature Biotechnology:

"HIV is an ordinary retrovirus. There is nothing about this virus that is unique. Everything that is discovered about HIV has an analogue in other retroviruses that don't cause AIDS. HIV only contains a very small piece of genetic information. There's no way it can do all these elaborate things they say it does." (Spin June 1992)

• Dr. Roger Cunningham, Immunologist, Microbiologist and Director of the Centre for Immunology at the State University of New York at Buffalo:

"Unfortunately, an AIDS 'establishment' seems to have formed that intends to discourage challenges to the dogma on one side and often insists on following discredited ideas on the other." (Sunday Times (London) 3 April 1994)

• Dr. Gordon Stewart, Emeritus Professor of Public Health, University of Glasgow:

"AIDS is a behavioural disease. It is multifactorial, brought on by several simultaneous strains on the immune system - drugs, pharmaceutical and recreational, sexually transmitted diseases, multiple viral infections." (Spin June 1992)

• Dr. Alfred Hässig, (1921-1999), former Professor of Immunology at the University of Bern, and former director Swiss Red Cross blood banks:

"The sentence of death accompanying the medical diagnosis of AIDS should be abolished." (Sunday Times (London) 3 April 1994)

• Dr. Charles Thomas, former Professor of Biochemistry, Harvard and John Hopkins Universities:

"The HIV-causes-AIDS dogma represents the grandest and perhaps the most morally destructive fraud that has ever been perpetrated on young men and women of the Western world." (Sunday Times (London) 3 April 1994)

• Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, New York Physician, founder of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR):

"The marketing of HIV, through press releases and statements, as a killer virus causing AIDS without the need for any other factors, has so distorted research and treatment that it may have caused thousands of people to suffer and die." (Sunday times (London) 17 May 1992)

• Dr. Andrew Herxheimer, Emeritus Professor of Pharmacology, UK Cochrane Centre, Oxford:

"I think zidovudine [AZT] was never really evaluated properly and that its efficacy has never been proved, but it's toxicity certainly is important. And I think it has killed a lot of people. Especially at the high doses. I personally think it not worth using alone or in combination at all." (Continuum Oct. 2000)

• Dr. Etienne de Harven, Emeritus Professor of Pathology, at the University of Toronto:

"Dominated by the media, by special pressure groups and by the interests of several pharmaceutical companies, the AIDS establishment efforts to control the disease lost contact with open-minded, peer-reviewed medical science since the unproven HIV/AIDS hypothesis received 100% of the research funds while all other hypotheses were ignored." (Reappraising AIDS Nov./Dec. 1998)

• Dr. Bernard Forscher, former editor of the U.S. Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences:

"The HIV hypothesis ranks with the 'bad air' theory for malaria and the 'bacterial infection' theory of beriberi and pellagra [caused by nutritional deficiencies]. It is a hoax that became a scam." (Sunday Times (London) 3 April 1994)


~ Virusmyth ~


More AIDS dissenters:

Tracking the real genocide

There is no such thing as the West Nile virus

There was once a real scientist who didn't work for the pharmaceutical mafia. This was a long time ago, around 1890. His name was Robert Koch, and he was a German physician. Dr. Koch and bacteriologist Friedrich Loeffler had this crazy idea that in order to prove that diseases are caused by a virus, it should be possible to isolate the virus organism, and then use that isolated organism to create a disease in another otherwise healthy animal (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch's_postulates). When people are sick you might see in an unhealthy person's blood, colonies of bacteria or other strange cellular formations. The existence of microorganisms in the body of a sick person does not indicate that the bacteria are the cause of disease. The idea that germs invade the body and cause disease was coined by Louis Pasteur. Even during Pasteur's time there was strong scientific evidence against this "germ theory" of disease because germs can evolve and mutate based on their environment, this is called pleomorphism (www.rawpaleodiet.org/pleomorphism-1.html) .

Dr. Koch's common sense postulates, which set up the criteria to prove the existence of a virus, used to be a part of science. As technology improved science should have been able to conclusively prove the existence of viruses under Koch's postulates and at least isolate and locate a virus under a microscope. But scientists never have been able to do this. Nobody could isolate any viruses to prove that they exist. Rather than admit that perhaps infectious viruses do not exist, dubious scientists now thought of a better plan. They decided to pretend viruses exist. To do that they had to claim the virus find fits into Koch's accepted postulates. So they write and use the term "isolated" for a virus even when they have done no such thing.

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The 'Mined Mind' of John Trudell

From: Bio

John Trudell is an acclaimed poet, national recording artist, actor and activist whose international following reflects the universal language of his words, work and message. Trudell (Santee Sioux) was a spokesperson for the Indian of All Tribes occupation of Alcatraz Island from 1969 to 1971. He then worked with the American Indian Movement (AIM), serving as Chairman of AIM from 1973 to 1979. In February of 1979, a fire of unknown origin killed Trudell’s wife, three children and mother-in-law. It was through this horrific tragedy that Trudell began to find his voice as an artist and poet, writing, in his words, “to stay connected to this reality.”

Trailer for 'Trudell'





"I'm not looking to overthrow the American government, the corporate
state already has." - John Trudell

"John Trudell is intellligent and articulate, therefore dangerous." -
FBI memo




From: Interview: John Trudell, Poet and Songwriter - An Un-Mined Mind!


When I reviewed Lines From A Mined Mind I tried to explain what you meant by a "Mined Mind" but I'm not sure how clear I was on it - can you take me through it?

Well you read the introduction right (Me: Yeah but you know I'm still not sure whether I got what you were after) Okay they've got us believing that believing is thinking, but the reality is we're not really thinking cause believing is accepting without thinking about it. Because we're not thinking we end up focusing on our fears, doubts and insecurities. The "being" part of human is being mined and that allows us to be programmed by the beliefs they tell us is thinking.

If we ever want to use the power of creative thinking we must become focused on the conscious power of thought. It's also got to be an awareness that's beyond just the self - it's a recognition of the power of intelligence in of itself without anything tied to it. It's all about energy, because thought is energy, and when you take energy away from humans we're flat - we're mined out.

[ ... ]

What do you hope that listeners, or readers take away from your work?

I don't believe in hope - hope is a sedative - it's something you do instead doing something - you sit around and "hope" things will get better. You know when Pandora was given her box of evils by the Gods and told not to open it, and she did anyway letting loose all the evils on the world, the last of the things that was in that box was hope!

Earth the living entity




From: Testimony of John Trudell in the Trial of Arlo Looking Cloud
February, 2004

Q. What is your occupation?

A. I am a writer and a performer, actor, speaker, in that area.

Q. You currently have a band?

A. Yeah, Bad Dog.

Q. Have you been an entertainer for quite a while?

A. Twenty years.

Q. Where were you born and raised?

A. I was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and I was raised in small

communities around Omaha, and my reservation is Sante in

Northern Nebraska. So I enlisted when I was seventeen, and up

until that time maybe I had lived in both communities, both

worlds equally.

Q. You did what at seventeen?

A. I enlisted in the Navy.

Q. In the Navy, okay. How long were you in the Navy?

A. Four years. Three years and ten months.

Q. Where did you go after that?

A. I stayed in southern California, because I was home

ported in Long Beach. I went to school for a while in San

Bernardino, and figured out that wasn't really working out for

me, and then I went to the Alcatraz occupation in 1969.

Q. What do you had mean by the Alcatraz occupation?

A. In 1969 collective native community, we called ourselves

Indians of all Tribes Alcatraz, but we occupied the former

prison under the 1868, in relationship to the 1868 Fort

Laramie treaty about surplus government lands reverting to

native use.

Q. About 1969 or so did you become somewhat of an activist?

A. Yes, 100 percent.

Q. How old are you now?

A. I will be 58 next week.

Q. Have you ever been involved with the AIM organization?

A. I was chairman of AIM from 1973 to around 1979.

Q. What did you do as chairman of AIM?

A. Me, I think basically I acted as a spokesman. You know,

really what, I mean the title is chairman, but in reality I

acted as a spokesman. I looked at that as what my role was.

It wasn't so much, because AIM at that time with the

leadership, you know, we all had different supporters. I mean

each leader had their own group of people around them, but I

never really looked at my role as being an order giver, it was

more to speak, because that is, I always felt that's why.

When I was nominated to be, actually was named cochairman, and

there was an incident and I became chairman, but I always felt

it was the people liked my analysis of things.

Crazy Horse

[Crazy Horse, from Bone Days by John Trudell. To those who have gone on before us.
Wounded Knee Massacre December 29, 1890.
Lest we forget]


Crazy Horse
We Hear what you say
One earth one mother
One does not sell the earth
The people walk upon
We are the land
How do we sell our mother
How do we sell the stars
How do we sell the air
Crazy Horse
We hear what you say

Too many people
Standing their ground
Standing the wrong ground
Predators face he possessed a race
Possession a war that doesn't end
Children of god feed on children of earth
Days people don't care for people
These days are the hardest
Material fields material harvest
decoration on chains that binds
Mirrors gold the people lose their minds

Crazy Horse
We Hear what you say
One earth one mother
One does not sell the earth
The people walk upon
We are the land
Today is now and then
Dream smokes touch the clouds
On a day when death didn't die
Real world time tricks shadows lie
Red white perception deception
Predator tries civilising us
But the tribes will not go without return
Genetic light from the other side
A song from the heart our hearts to give
The wild days the glory days live

Crazy Horse
We Hear what you say
One earth one mother
One does not sell the earth
The people walk upon
We are the land
How do we sell our mother
How do we sell the stars
How do we sell the air

Crazy Horse
We hear what you say
Crazy Horse
We hear what you say
We are the seventh generation
We are the seventh generation

John Trudell spoken word
Quiltman Traditional Vocals
Mark Shark slide guitar and percussion
Ricky Eckstein Keyboards and percussion
Billy Watts Electric guitar


Tribes of Europe




from the talk:
"What it means to be a human being"
Given by John Trudell at a benifit for the O'wa indians and there resistance to oil drilling on there ancestoral land.

Full talk can be downloaded for free

www.tucradio.org/native.html

A condom a day...

Britons 'saving money with sex'

As the credit crunch bites, Britons may be turning to sex as a cheap way to pass the time, a charity says.

A YouGov survey of 2,000 adults found sex was the most popular free activity, ahead of window shopping and gossiping.

The Scots were most amorous with 43% choosing sex over other pastimes, compared with 35% in South England.

Aids charity the Terrence Higgins Trust, which published the survey, also welcomed recent figures showing an increase in condom sales.

Around one in 10 respondents to the survey, carried in November, said their favourite free activity was window shopping and 6% chose going to a museum as the cheapest way to pass the time.

But the sexes differed on their priorities, with women preferring to gossip with friends while men had sex firmly at the top of their list.

Safe sex

Publishing the results to coincide with World Aids Day, the Terrence Higgins Trust reminded people to practise safe sex and pointed out that a packet of condoms costs a fraction of the cost of a night out...

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