Saturday, March 29, 2008

UN rejects water as basic human right




The Harper government can declare victory after a United Nations meeting rejected calls for water to be recognized as a basic human right.

Instead, a special resolution proposed by Germany and Spain at the UN human rights council was stripped of references that recognized access to water as a human right. The countries also chose to scrap the idea of creating an international watchdog to investigate the issue, choosing instead to appoint a new consultant that would make recommendations over the next three years.

Federal officials in Canada said last week that the government wanted to ensure the meeting's outcome reflected the fact that access to water is not formally recognized as a human right in international law. But a social advocacy group said that the position was designed to protect the right to sell water under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

"Clearly (the Harper government is) happy with the status quo: They're not going to be an agent for change, and they're not going to support the right to water," said Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians. "About every eight seconds, a child somewhere in the world is dying from dirty water, and it's just shocking that our government has taken this position."

The opposition Liberals supported the government's position last week, arguing that the original UN resolution could open the door to bulk water exports to the U.S. because of NAFTA. Liberal water critic Francis Scarpaleggia said he planned to introduce a private member's bill to restrict large transfers of water within Canada to ensure that bulk exports abroad would also be forbidden.

The UN's high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, said last week that the position doesn't reflect Canada's traditional role on the international stage.

"Canada is taking a position that is not the more classic perceived, Canada as the kind of the bridge builder, peacemaker, consensus maker," Arbour told the CBC.

Meantime, Barlow denied that the resolution would require Canada to make bulk water exports to the U.S.

"The requirement in the United States would be for them to conserve first," said Barlow. "There's no requirement as a human right for us to provide water for swimming pools and golf courses and fountains in Las Vegas."

A spokesperson for the Foreign Affairs Department said in an e-mail that there was "no consensus among states regarding the existence, scope or content of such a right."

US government to Nuke US population

It's official: Nuke attack would devastate U.S. cities


A new study by researchers at the Center for Mass Destruction Defense (CMADD) at the University of Georgia details the catastrophic impact a nuclear attack would have on American cities.

The study, which the authors said was the most advanced and detailed simulation published in open scientific literature, highlights the inability of the nation’s current medical system to handle casualties from a nuclear attack. It also suggests what the authors said are much needed yet relatively simple interventions that could save tens of thousands of lives.

“The likelihood of a nuclear weapon attack in an American city is steadily increasing, and the consequences will be overwhelming” said Cham Dallas, CMADD director and professor in the UGA College of Pharmacy. “So we need to substantially increase our preparation.”

Dallas and co-author William Bell, CMADD senior research scientist and faculty member of the UGA College of Public Health, examined four high-profile American cities – New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Atlanta – and modeled the effects of a 20 kiloton nuclear detonation and a 550 kiloton detonation. (For comparison, the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in the 12 to 20 kiloton range). Bell explained that a 20 kiloton weapon could be manufactured by terrorists and fledgling nuclear countries such as North Korea and Iran, while a 550 kiloton device is commonly found in the arsenal of the former Soviet Union and therefore is the most likely to be stolen by terrorists.

The study, which took three years to complete and appears in the current issue of the International Journal of Health Geographics, combines data on the impact of the devices, prevailing weather patterns and block-level population data from the U.S. Census Bureau to provide a level of detail previously unavailable.

Among the study’s findings:

* A 20-kiloton detonation would leave debris tens of feet thick in downtown areas with buildings 10-stories or higher. Roughly half of the population in downtown areas would be killed, mainly from collapsing buildings. Most of those surviving the initial blast in downtown areas would be exposed to a fatal dose of radiation.
* While the main effects from a 20-kiloton explosion would be from the blast and the radiation it releases, a 550-kiloton explosion would create additional and substantial casualties from burns. Such an explosion would superheat the blast zone, causing buildings to spontaneously combust. Mass fires would consume cities, reaching out nearly four miles (6.3 km) in all directions from the detonation site.
* A 550 kiloton detonation in New York would result in a fallout plume extending the length of Long Island, resulting in more than 5 million deaths.
* A 550 kiloton detonation in Washington, D.C. would destroy hospitals in the District, but its fallout plume would also incapacitate hospitals in Baltimore, nearly 40 miles away.

The researchers note that in all four cities studied, hospitals are concentrated in the area most likely to be destroyed. Another weak link is the inability of the nation’s hospital system to treat the burn victims a 550-kiloton detonation would create. A 550-kiloton detonation in Atlanta, the least densely populated of the four cities studied, would result in nearly 300,000 serious burn victims.

“The hospital system has about 1,500 burn beds in the whole country, and of these maybe 80 or 90 percent are full at any given time,” Bell said. “There’s no way of treating the burn victims from a nuclear attack with the existing medical system.”

Dallas acknowledges that the consequences of a nuclear attack would be grim, but stresses that there are ways that tens of thousands lives could be saved.

“If a nuclear detonation were to occur in a downtown area, the picture would be bleak there,” Dallas said. “But in urban areas farther from the detonation, there actually is quite a bit that we can do. In certain areas, it may be possible to turn the death rate from 90 percent in some burn populations to probably 20 or 30 percent – and those are very big differences – simply by being prepared well in advance.”

One intervention is to mount a public awareness campaign to teach civilians what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. Since radioactive plumes move downwind, a person can look up at the trees to see which way the wind is blowing and then flee perpendicular to the wind. Because the plumes are significantly longer than they are wide, moving as little as one to five miles perpendicular to the plume can mean the difference between life and death. People in areas upwind of the detonation site, on the other hand, are safest staying where they are.

“There are certain areas where people should flee,” Dallas said. “But in most areas, it would be much safer for people to stay put.”

Dallas said today’s hospital burn units provide exemplary but time consuming care to burn victims, who typically arrive sporadically and in small numbers. A nuclear attack would bring a sudden surge of patients, but the medical system could dramatically minimize fatalities by training staff and equipping non-medical people to treat second-degree burn victims in much larger numbers. Dallas said the focus must be on cleaning the wounds to avoid fatal infections, administering painkillers and then moving on to the next patient. And all of this must occur in the field, since thousands of victims would not make it to a hospital.

“Under the current system and in these extraordinary conditions, they’re going to be able to treat a hundred people well and not treat 99,900 people,” Dallas said. “So we’ve got to change those gears.”

On April 19, Dallas will address the United Nations for the second time in as many years. He will discuss options for repairing the crumbling sarcophagus surrounding the reactor that triggered the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. He also will discuss the consequences of a nuclear attack and what nations can do to prepare.

“We want to try to encourage people to pay attention to this, because it’s not all the end of the world,” Dallas said. “There are actually steps that one can take to save lives. But we’re running out of time.”

Monday, March 17, 2008

Robert Gallo: The Man That Created AIDS

A NEW THEORY ON THE ORIGIN OF AIDS

(The following manuscript is a revised version of the scientific paper Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz and coauthors presented at the XI International Conference on AIDS in Vancouver, BC Canada on July 10, 1996. For more information contact 508-546-6586, and see "Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola--Nature, Accident, or Intentional?" [Tetrahedron, LLC Press, 1996; $29.95] by Dr. Horowitz)

Abstract

This article reviews scientific and U.S. Government documents that show AIDS-like viruses were developed by National Cancer Institute researchers along with military biological weapons contractors between 1962 and 1974 during the "Special Virus Cancer Program." The possibility of this research giving rise to contaminated experimental hepatitis B (HB) vaccines, and thus, the simultaneous emergence of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in New York City and Central Africa in 1978 is advanced.

Introduction

Contrary to widespread speculations that human AIDS viruses arose from African green monkey viruses that naturally jumped species, in 1971, National Cancer Institute (NCI) researchers noted that "only one virus [of 27 then known retroviruses] which contains reverse transcriptase, does not seem to be oncogenic", the simian foamy virus (SFV).(1)

Indeed, during the early days of cancer virus and viral vaccine research, simian viruses were common experimental contaminants. Could they have somehow mutated giving rise to the human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV-1 and 2) and AIDS?

Background

The theory that viruses played a major role in carcinogenesis was most actively investigated by researchers at the NCI during the 1960s to mid-1970s. On the eve of Nixon's "war on cancer," NCI investigators explained how retrovirus related cancers such as lymphoma, leukaemia, and sarcoma might develop following virus infections. Twelve years later, in 1984, Dr. Robert Gallo and other esteemed NCI researchers advanced an essentially identical theory to explain AIDS.(1-10)

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, cell tumor biology researchers determined that synthetic RNA and feline leukaemia virus (FELV) "template" added to "human type C" viruses--those associated with cancers of the lymph nodes increased the rate of DNA production (and subsequent provirus and virus reproduction) as much as thirty times.(1) Such hybrid viruses, these researchers reported, may cause many cancers besides leukaemias and lymphomas, including sarcomas. Other NCI and Litton Bionetics teams reported modifying the fortieth discovered simian virus (SV40) by infusing it with nucleic acids from other species including FELV RNA, avian (i.e., chicken) myeloblastosis virus (AMV) RNA, associated with leukemia and sarcoma development, and mouse sarcoma RNA to: 1) make them carcinogenic, 2) prompt extreme immunosuppression in primates,(2,4,11) and 3) study RNA-dependent DNA polymerase (i.e., reverse transcriptase) and its relationship to human carcinogenesis,(6,11-14) For example, early work in viral engineering in relation to human carcinogenesis examined the activity of reverse transcriptase in normal versus acute immature leukaemic lymph cells (i.e., lymphoblasts). To do so, researchers evaluated the single stranded "70S RNA retrovirus" found in chickens which caused white bood cell (WBC) dysfunction, sarcomas, progressive wasting, and death--all prominent features of AIDS.(13)

Human WBCs were injected with this AMV RNA to determine if the cells were prompted to produce proteins and new viruses called for by the virogene.(14) Another team evaluated the human cancer-causing effects of the single-stranded 70S RNA reverse transcriptase enzyme. They used FELV and Mason-Pfizer monkey viruses to deliver these carcinogens to normal human lymphocytes.(15)

During parts of these experiments, NCI and Bionetics investigators even mixed RNA and DNA from chickens and cats with human WBC fractions including human lymphocyte DNA polymerases to induce cancer type and AIDS-virus-like reactions (see fig. 1).(15)

Other Gallo publications detailed the steps involved in creating immune-system-destroying cancer-causing viruses by adapting monkey, rat, and bird leukemia and tumor viruses for experimental use in a human (NC-37) cell line.16 One team discussed the synthesis of new RNA tumor viruses induced by 5-iodo-2'-deoxyuridine (IdU), a constituent of RNA in rodent cell cultures, and noted that chemical treatment might be used to halt the reverse transcriptase-linked viral reproduction cycle.(17)

In another report NCI researchers isolated a virus-like particle from human acute leukemic WBCs which had a specific density of 1.16-1.17g/ml, which allowed it to be repeatedly recovered without being destroyed by physical handling. Moreover, it was capable of producing the principal rapidly growing cancers seen in AIDS, including leukemias, sarcomas, and carcinomas.(19)

Defense Industry Interest

On April 4 and 5, 1969, at Fort Detrick, Maryland--America's premier biological weapons testing facility, a controversial symposium on the entry and control of foreign nucleic acids into human cells was held.(10) That year the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council informed Department of Defense (DOD) officials that "synthetic biological agents" that caused treatment resistant immunosupression could be developed "over the next five years" at a cost of $10 million.(9) A year later, NCI researchers described the experimental entry of bacterial RNA into human WBCs before a special symposium sponsored by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Their paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, discussed several possible mechanisms prompting the entry of foreign nucleic acids into lymphocytes.(2) Soon thereafter, the NCI acquired the lion's share of Fort Detrick's facilities.(10)

According to a 1970 Congressional Record, Bionetics Research Laboratories, a subsidiary of Litton Industries, Inc., was sixth on the list of U.S. Army biological weapons (BW) contractors.(20) Later Congressional Records showed that Bionetics's affiliate--Litton Systems, Inc., another subsidiary of Litton Industries, Inc.--was among the most frequently contracted companies involved in BW research and development between 1960 and 1970.(21)

The Litton Industries, Inc. 1977-1978 annual reports stated,

"In June, [1976] Litton Bionetics won the fourth renewal of its contract to manage the operations of the National Cancer Institute's Frederick (Md.) Cancer Research Center."(22)

Later, Litton sold Bionetics Research Labs to Medpath--a subsidiary of Dow Corning--among the largest medical laboratories in the United States, yet continued to administer the lion's share of NCI's Frederick operations funding to the time of this writing.

Furthermore, NCI staff reports revealed that Litton Bionetics had been granted the service contract to supply all NCI researchers, worldwide, with virtually every primate cancer research material requested, including seed viruses and viral hybrids, experimental reagents, and colony born monkeys, including M. mulatta, associated with the major monkey AIDS virus outbreaks in California's Davis Lab, and the 1967 Marburg virus outbreaks in three European vaccine production facilities and the African green C. aethiops.(24-26) Furthermore, from these publications, a list of the viruses and virus recombinants that Bionetics researchers developed, tested, and supplied to other NCI researchers during the 1960s and early 1970s was developed (see fig. 2).

A 1971 Litton Bionetics research report noted that "highest priority was given to the search for human leukemia viruses resembling the type-C viruses causing chicken and mouse leukemias" beginning as early as 1962.(23) Bionetics researchers, who received approximately $2 million annually for this work, reported:

"Several of the Type C viruses are established as the causative agents in leukemias, lymphomas, and sarcomas of chickens, mice, cats and hamsters. Many of these can infect and produce malignancies in other species (e.g., a sarcoma virus of the cat produces tumors in marmoset monkeys). Furthermore, some of these viruses can cause malignant transformation to occur in animal and human cells grown in the laboratory (e.g., cat leukemia and sarcoma viruses alter embryonic human cells). Type C virus particles have been found in association with malignancies of a spectrum of animal species including nonhuman primates, rats, cattle, wooley monkeys, gibbons, and man. . . ."(24)

Though some contemporary investigators have argued that HIV-1 and 2 are not type-C viruses,(27) more recently, researchers noted they go through a stage of type-C morphogenesis during replication and look and behave similar to the type-C viruses. "Although not classified as type-C viruses, lentiviruses follow a similar assembly strategy, by which capsid [shell] formation and budding [of the virus from the infected cell] occur simultaneously."(28)

Perhaps not coincidentally, during the metamorphosis of HIV, researchers found "a reproducible peak of viral protein in the fraction corresponding to a density of approximately 1.15 to 1.16g/ml . . . in gradients of gag HIV," that is, the gene that codes for the inner shell, capsid-like structure, of the AIDS virus.28 It may be recalled that Gallo et al. reported this number also, but in 1973, after repeatedly recovering the same density "virus-like particle" from human leukemic cells that was capable of producing the principal rapidly growing cancers seen in AIDS.19 Moreover, Kyle noted the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Bureau of Biologics found a similar characteristic in the "adventitious virus" found in some live polio vaccine approved by and released in 1977.(29)

It is known that RNA viruses in general, and type-C and D lentiviruses in particular, "undergo extensive genetic variation as a result of error-prone replication and recombination such that they are considered to exist as 'quasispecies,'" that is, a population of relatives with similar genes.30 One researcher noted "the exceptional ability of HIV-1 to mutate results in rapid development of quasispecies which evade host defenses and become resistant to various antiviral" agents.(31)

Bionetics/NCI researchers went on to report that, "Reactions between Type C viruses causing leukemias and sarcomas (solid tumors)," were a major area of interest for cancer prevention studies including the detection of cancer viruses, and viral vaccine experiments. The investigators wrote:

"When inoculated into appropriate cell cultures, type C sarcoma viruses of chickens, mice and cats produce foci [cancerous growths] of altered cells. This fundamental discovery provides a readily visible indicator reaction for the detection of sarcoma viruses. On the other hand, leukemia viruses grown in tissue culture do not cause foci or other detectable changes. The finding that leukemia viruses can either inhibit or enhance focus formation by sarcoma viruses of the same species has led to the development of methods for the detection and quantitation of leukemia viruses indirectly.

Certain of the chicken, cat and mouse sarcoma viruses are "defective" in that they do not produce foci in cell cultures or tumors in animals in the absence of a co-infecting, 'helper' leukemia virus. [Note the researchers called carcinogenic viruses "defective" if they were unable to produce cancers without the help of other factors including chemicals, radiation, and here leukemia viruses.] Further, in the presence of a defective sarcoma virus the helper action of leukemia viruses can be used as a specific indicator for their detection and quantitation. It is now believed that defective sarcoma virus leukemia virus interactions may be more widespread in nature than originally thought and that similar systems may be found in man. A mouse leukemia virus which has been adapted to grow in human cells is now available to search for defective human sarcoma viruses, if they exist."(24)

In continuing this effort, they developed an "alternative approach" for the detection of possible human leukemia viruses that employed recombinant cat and mouse leukemia and sarcoma viruses engineered to cross species.

"A defective mouse sarcoma virus and its leukemia virus helper can be made to form tight functional aggregates, which behave as one virus. Using a mixture of mouse sarcoma virus and cat leukemia virus, a hybrid aggregate which could be grown continuously in cat cells was produced. [As Gallo et al. also reported.(14,15)] Because the aggregate is defective, it requires the simultaneous presence of a cat leukemia virus for producing altered foci in cat cells. Thus, a focus forming sarcoma virus of the mouse, artificially changed to one possessing infectivity for cat cells, can now be used in cultures for the detection of cat leukemia viruses.

This hybrid virus, as well as the cat leukemia virus, will also grow in human embryonic cells in tissue culture. If sufficient amounts of the Type C particles found in association with human leukemia can be obtained, the possibility exists that the cat-adapted mouse sarcoma virus can be hybridized with the human agent to produce an indicator system for the detection of human leukemia viruses. [Figure 3 presents a graphic description of this work.](24)

The NCI staff went on to explain their work elucidating: 1) the "biochemical pathways of tumor virus infection and replication," 2) reverse transcriptase activity "in cells of patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia . . . sarcomas, Burkitt's lymphoma and breast cancer," 3) experiments with Type B viruses thought to be associated with breast cancer, 4) Herpes-type viruses "associated with some forms of chronic leukemia, lymphoma, and postnasal carcinoma," and 5) Epstein-Barr viruses extracted from Burkitt's lymphomas and postnasal carcinomas. Vaccines, the NCI researchers explained, were expected to be developed from these efforts to help prevent and treat human cancers as coordinated "through the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in the West Nile District of Uganda."(24)

A Possible Iatrogenic Cause of AIDS

In May 1942, George W. Merck was commissioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to direct the War Research Service overseeing America's biological weapons industry.(32) Since then, the Merck company, in collaboration with the U.S. Public Health Service, provided ongoing expertise to the U.S. Army and its contractors "to bolster ongoing projects in fields in which it has an independent interest."20

A service contract awarded Merck and Company, Inc., under the "Special Virus Cancer Program (SVCP)," called for "oncogenic virus research and vaccine development." The chief objective of this work was reported as being "of fundamental importance to the goals of SVCP." Their proposed course of study included �work towards development of a feline leukemia-sarcoma virus vaccine and a herpesvirus type 2 vaccine [to] be continued as rapidly as possible."(33)

This grant description revealed that simian viruses (SV40)--currently suspected as being an AIDS virus progenitor29�and their "tumor cell ghosts" were prepared and used as principle carcinogenic triggers against which "non-protective SV40 tumor cell vaccines" were tested.33 This work was done at the same time Merck's chief vaccine developer, tumor cell virologist Maurice Hilleman collaborated with Hepatitis B (HB) vaccine pioneer Dr. Saul Krugman of New York University Medical Center, another documented Army biological weapons contractor,(20) and Robert Purcell of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to develop and test the first "4 lots of vaccine that would amount to perhaps 200,000 human doses" by 1974.(34-36)

Bionetics military supplied rhesus monkeys and chimpanzees were used to develop these vaccines during this "initial limited clinical test for establishing safety and measuring antibody response [in human subjects]." This work was based on pilot investigations conducted between 1967 and 1971 with "heat-inactivated hepatitis B vaccine" in animals and high risk human subjects in New York and Central Africa.(34)

At this time Dr. A. M. Prince, charged with overseeing the Laboratory of Virology at the New York Blood Center, wherein the non-human primates were housed, reported a major biohazard and containment problem. Prince admitted, "I would say more than 70%" of the animals became environmentally infected with hepatitis B (and likely other viruses) during their captivity.(34)

In 1974, Purcell reported failed attempts to grow the HB seed viruses, needed for these vaccines, in cell cultures. Willowbrook State School (Staten Island, NY) mentally retarded children, rhesus monkeys, and chimpanzees, he announced, were successfully used instead to culture the viruses subsequently inoculated into high risk human subjects (e.g., Willowbrook children, Central African villagers, and apparently New York's gay men as well) to develop the various vaccine subtypes.(35) "Cross-challenge experiments, and evaluation of various aspects of passive and active immunization against hepatitis B infection," Purcell explained, then proceeded in collaboration with the FDA.

Thus, simian viruses, and/or Bionetics engineered viral hybrids, infecting chimpanzees during this work might have infected humans and given rise to HIV-1 or its immediate progenitor(s). As Shultz explained, "a lentivirus isolated from chimpanzees (SIVcpz)" is "the closest primate relative of HIV-1."(27) Given, Bionetics's involvement in primate cancer virus and animal supply to these New York/Bethesda/Uganda investigators, SIVcpz might have evolved because the chimps had likely been among the first creatures to be exposed to man-made retroviruses by way of direct inoculation or experimental monkey cohabitation.

It is also possible, even if Merck's human experimental HB vaccine hadn�t included contaminated chimpanzee serum, only serum taken from New York's children and/or gay men, live viruses injected around 1970 could have combined with the simian viruses (e.g., SV40, SIVagm, or SFV) the donors may have carried following vaccination with Merck's polio vaccines administered during the previous decade.(29)

These facts provide additional background for evaluating Hilleman's 1986 published comments of having imported AIDS into North America by way of African green monkeys destined for use in Merck's viral and vaccine research. In an effort to reduce laboratory and vaccine contamination, Hilleman reported, "I brought African greens in. I didn't know we were importing AIDS virus at the time."(37)

Summary and Conclusions

This article reviews scientific literature and U. S. government documents that provide additional insight into the iatrogenic theory of AIDS. All it may have taken was one monkey used to develop the initial pilot HB vaccine lots, administered virtually simultaneously in New York City and Central Africa by 1974, carrying iatrogenically evolved or genetically engineered simian sarcoma-leukemia virus hybrids, to have started the AIDS epidemic.(38) This knowledge is important for at least three reasons: 1) the guilt and stigma attached to the victims of AIDS, homophobia, and racism, may ease in light of these findings; 2) new therapies might evolve from this knowledge; and 3) a thorough independent investigation and analysis of the aforementioned facts may help to prevent future outbreaks and epidemics.(39)

This work additionally supports others who have called for careful PCR analyses of suspected vaccine lots allegedly in safe keeping at the FDA.(38) Furthermore, as this report unearths evidence linking Willowbrook State School children, and apparently other high risk groups in New York City and Central Africa, to possibly contaminated experimental HB vaccines developed in chimpanzees, look-back studies of AIDS cases among those who received these early vaccines is clearly warranted.


References
1. Gallo RC, Sarin PS, Allen PT, Newton WA Priori ES, Bowen JM and Dmochowski L. Reverse transcriptase in type C virus particles of human origin. Nature New Biology 1971;232:140-142; see also Gallo RC. Transfer RNA and transfer RNA methylation in growing and "resting" adult and embyonic tissues and in various oncogenic systems. Cancer Research 1971;31:621-29.
2. Herrera F, Adamson RH and Gallo RC. Uptake of transfer ribonucleic acid by normal and leukemic cells. Proc Nat Acad Sci 1970;67;4:1943-1950. This paper was presented before NATO scientists at the "International Symposium on Uptake of Informative Molecules by Living Cells, Mol, Belgium, 1970," the year in which $10 million in funds were appropriated by the Department of Defense for the development of AIDS-like viruses.
3. Gallo RC, Perry S and Breitman RT. The enzymatic mechanisms for deoxythymidine synthesis in human leukocytes. Journal of Biological Chemistry 1967;242;21:5059-5068.
4. Gallo RC and Perry S. Enzymatic abnormality in human leukaemia.Nature 1968;218:465-466.
5. Gallo RC and Breitman TR. The enzymatic mechanisms for deoxythymidine synthesis in human leukocytes: Inhibition of deoxythymidine phosphorylase by purines. Journal of Biological Chemistry 1968;243;19:4943-4951.
6. Gallo RC, Yang SS and Ting RC. RNA dependent DNA Polymerase of human acute leukaemic cells. Nature 1970;228:927-929.
7. Gallo RC and Longmore JL. Asparaginyl-tRNA and resistance of murine leukaemias to L-asparaginase. Nature 1970;227:1134-1136.
8. Horowitz LG. Deadly Innocence: The Kimberly Bergalis Case: Solving the Greatest Murder Mystery in the History of American Medicine.
Tetrahedron, LLC., 1994, p. 14.
9. Department of Defense Appropriations For 1970: Hearings Before A Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations House of Representatives, Ninety-first Congress, First Session, H.B. 15090, Part 5, Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Dept. of the Army. U.S., July 1, 1969, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., pg. 79 and page 129 of supplemental record obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
10. Washington Correspondent. Relief of Fort Detrick. Nature 1970;228:803; regarding controversial conference see: Boffey PM. Detrick birthday: Dipute flares over biological warfare center. Science April 19, 1968;171;285-288.
11. Gallaher RE, Ting RC and Gallo RC. A common change aspartyl-tRNA in polyoma and SV transformed cells. Biochimica Et Biophysica Acta 1972;272:568-582.
12. Fujioka S and Gallo RC. Aminoacyl transfer RNA profiles in human myeloma cells. Blood 1971;38;2:246-252.
13. Smith RG and Gallo RC. DNA-dependent DNA polymerases I and II from normal human-blood lymphocytes. Proceedings of the National Academy ofSciences 1972;69;10:2879-2884.
14. Bobrow SN, Smith RG, Reitz MS and Gallo RC. Stimulated normal human lymphocytes contain a ribonuclease-sensitive DNA polymerase distinct from viral RNA-directed DNA polymerase. Proceedings National Academy of Sciences 1972;69;11:3228-3232.
15. Robert MS, Smith RG, Gallo RC, Sarin PS and Abrell JW. Viral and cellular DNA polymerase: Comparison of activities with synthetic and
natural RNA templates. Science 1972;176:798-800.
16. Gallo RC, Abrell JW, Robert MS, Yang SS and Smith RG. Reversetranscriptase from Mason-Pfizer monkey tumor virus, avian myeloblastosis
virus, and Rauscher leukemia virus and its response to rifamycin derivatives. Journal of the National Cancer Institute 1972;48;4:1185-1189.
17. Wu AM, Ting RC, Paran M and Gallo RC. Cordycepin inhibits induction of murine leukovirus production by 5-iodo-2�-deoxyuridine. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 1972;69;12:3820-3824.
18. Gillespie D, Gillespie S, Gallo RC, East J and Dmochowski L. Genetic origin of RD114 and other RNA tumor viruses assayed by molecular hybridization. Nature New Biology 1973;224:52-54.
19. Gallo RC, Miller NR, Saxinger WC and Gillespie D. Primate RNA Tumor Virus-Like DNA Synthesized Endogenously by RNA-Dependent DNA Polymerase in Virus-like Particles from Fresh Human Acute Leukemic Blood Cells. Proceedings National Academy of Sciences 1973;70;11:3219-3224.
20. Department of Defense Appropriations For 1970: Hearings Before A Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations House of Representatives, Ninety-first Congress, First Session, H.B. 15090, Part 5, Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Dept. of the Army. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1969, p. 689; see also Congressional Record, August 8, 1969, p. 23073, and for U.S. Public Health Service involvement and funding see page 23079.
21. Committee on Human Resources, United States Senate. Hearings before the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research, Biological Testing Involving Human Subjects by the Department of Defense, 1977: Examination of Serious Deficiencies in the Defense Departments Efforts to Protect the Human Subjects of Drug Research. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, May 8 and May 23, 1977, pp. 80-100.
22. Litton Industries, Inc. Annual Report[s] to the Securities and Exchange Commission for Fiscal Year Ended July 31, 1977 [and 1978]. Commission file number 1-3998. Securities and Exchange Commission, Office of Reports, October 31, 1977 [and October 30, 1978].
23. NCI staff. The Special Virus Cancer Program: Progress Report #8 [and #9].Office of the Associate Scientific Director for Viral Oncology (OASDVO). J. B. Moloney, Ed., Washington, D. C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1971 [and 1972]. Note: This is a very hard publication to find. Few library data bases have it listed, including the NCI Library at Fort Detrick. It is available through the Davis Library, The University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Government Documents Department Depository, Reference # HE 20.3152:V81.
24. Ibid., 15-19; 20-26.
25. Ibid., 187-188; and in 1972 Progress Report #9, pp. 273-289.
26. Fine DL and Arthur LO. Prevalence of natural immunity to Type-D and
Type-C Retroviruses in primates. In: Viruses in Naturally Occurring
Cancers: Book B. Myron Essex, George Todaro and Harald zur Hausen, eds.,
Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1980, Vol. 7,
pp. 793-813; see also Gallo RC, Wong-Staal F, Marhkam PD, Ruscetti R,
Kalyanaraman VS, Ceccherini-Nelli L, Favera RD, Josephs S, Miller NR
and Reitz, Jr MS. Recent studies with infectious primate retroviruses:
Hybridization to primate DNA and some biological effects on fresh
human blood leukocytes by simian sarcoma virus and Gibbon ape leukemia
virus. Ibid.. 793-813.
27. Shultz TF. Origin of AIDS (letter to the editor). The Lancet 1992;339:867.
28. Sakalian M, Parker SD, Weldon RA and Hunter E. Synthesis and assembly of retrovirus gag precursors into immature capsids in vitro.
Journal of Virology 1996;70;6:3706-3715.
29. Kyle WS. Simian retroviruses, poliovaccine, and origin of AIDS. The Lancet 1992;339:600-601; Personal communication from Walter Kyle, May 19, 1996.
30. Drew L, Lichtenstein, Issel CJ and Montelaro RC. Genomic quasispecies associated with the initiation of infection and disease in ponies
experimentally infected with equine infectious anemia virus. Journal of Virology 1996;70;6:3346-3354.
31. Shaheen F, Duan L, Zhu M, Bagasra O and Pomerantz RJ. Targeting human immunodeficiency virus type 1 reverse transcriptase by intracellular expression of single-chain variable fragments to inhibit early stages of the viral life cycle Journal of Virology 1996;70;6:3392-3400.
32. Covert NM. Cutting Edge: A history of Fort Detrick, Maryland 1943-1993. Fort Detrick: United States Army Garrison, 1993, pp. 17-19.
33. NCI staff. Op cit. p. 111; and in 1972 Progress Report #9, pp. 139-141.
34. Krugman S. Viral hepatitis type B: Prospects for active immunization. In: International Symposium on Viral Hepatitis, Milan, Dec. 1974.
Develop. biol. Standard. Vol. 30, Munich: S. Karger Basel, 1975, pp. VI; 363-367; the General Discussion can be found on pp. 375-379.
35. Purcell RH. Current understanding of hepatitis B virus infection and its implications for immunoprophylaxis. In: Antiviral Mechanisms: Perspectives in Virology IX, The Gustav Stern Symposium. New York: Academic Press, 1975 pp. 49-76.
36. Krugman S, Giles JP and Hammond J. Infectious hepatitis: Evidence for two distinctive clinical, epidemiological, and immunological
types of infection. JAMA 1967;200;5:366-373(96-103).
37. Shorter E. The Health Century: A companion to the PBS televisioneries. New York: Doubleday, 1987, pp. 67-69; 195-204. Maurice Hilleman
was interviewed by Edward Shorter on February 6, 1987. A copy of the audiotaped interview is held in the archives of the National Library
of Medicine, History Division, Washington, D.C.
38. Horowitz LG. Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola, Nature, Accident or Intentional? Tetrahedron, LLC, 1996 p. 481.
39. Stricker RB and Elswood BF. Origin of AIDS (letter to the editor). The Lancet 1992;339:867.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Frozen “doomsday” vault saves crops for elite


The elites such as Rockefeller & co have completed a multi-million dollar seed facility, dubbed the doomsday vault, that will act as their backup when Monsanto incorporated seed’s spread even further throughout our world. These patented seeds are right now having disastrous effects in parts of the world, wiping out the free, natural and safe food supply.

Inside a frozen mountain hundreds of miles above sea level, 1,100 kilometers from the North Pole lies ‘the last refuge for the world’s crops’ said Cary Fowler, of the Rome-based Global Crop Diversity Trust, which was founded by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and Biodiversity International.

Frozen “doomsday” vault saves crops for elite

Global Research
04.12.2007
F. William Engdahl



One thing Microsoft founder Bill Gates can’t be accused of is sloth. He was already programming at 14, founded Microsoft at age 20 while still a student at Harvard. By 1995 he had been listed by Forbes as the world’s richest man from being the largest shareholder in his Microsoft, a company which his relentless drive built into a de facto monopoly in software systems for personal computers.

In 2006 when most people in such a situation might think of retiring to a quiet Pacific island, Bill Gates decided to devote his energies to his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest ‘transparent’ private foundation as it says, with a whopping $34.6 billion endowment and a legal necessity to spend $1.5 billion a year on charitable projects around the world to maintain its tax free charitable status. A gift from friend and business associate, mega-investor Warren Buffett in 2006, of some $30 billion worth of shares in Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway put the Gates’ foundation into the league where it spends almost the amount of the entire annual budget of the United Nations’ World Health Organization.

So when Bill Gates decides through the Gates Foundation to invest some $30 million of their hard earned money in a project, it is worth looking at.

No project is more interesting at the moment than a curious project in one of the world’s most remote spots, Svalbard. Bill Gates is investing millions in a seed bank on the Barents Sea near the Arctic Ocean, some 1,100 kilometers from the North Pole. Svalbard is a barren piece of rock claimed by Norway and ceded in 1925 by international treaty (see map).

On this God-forsaken island Bill Gates is investing tens of his millions along with the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto Corporation, Syngenta Foundation and the Government of Norway, among others, in what is called the ‘doomsday seed bank.’ Officially the project is named the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, part of the Svalbard island group.

The seed bank is being built inside a mountain on Spitsbergen Island near the small village of Longyearbyen. It’s almost ready for ‘business’ according to their releases. The bank will have dual blast-proof doors with motion sensors, two airlocks, and walls of steel-reinforced concrete one meter thick. It will contain up to three million different varieties of seeds from the entire world, ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future,’ according to the Norwegian government. Seeds will be specially wrapped to exclude moisture. There will be no full-time staff, but the vault’s relative inaccessibility will facilitate monitoring any possible human activity.

Did we miss something here? Their press release stated, ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future.’ What future do the seed bank’s sponsors foresee, that would threaten the global availability of current seeds, almost all of which are already well protected in designated seed banks around the world?

Anytime Bill Gates, the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto and Syngenta get together on a common project, it’s worth digging a bit deeper behind the rocks on Spitsbergen. When we do we find some fascinating things.

The first notable point is who is sponsoring the doomsday seed vault. Here joining the Norwegians are, as noted, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the US agribusiness giant DuPont/Pioneer Hi-Bred, one of the world’s largest owners of patented genetically-modified (GMO) plant seeds and related agrichemicals; Syngenta, the Swiss-based major GMO seed and agrichemicals company through its Syngenta Foundation; the Rockefeller Foundation, the private group who created the “gene revolution with over $100 million of seed money since the 1970’s; CGIAR, the global network created by the Rockefeller Foundation to promote its ideal of genetic purity through agriculture change.

CGIAR and ‘The Project’

As I detailled in the book, Seeds of Destruction1, in 1960 the Rockefeller Foundation, John D. Rockefeller III’s Agriculture Development Council and the Ford Foundation joined forces to create the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, the Philippines. By 1971, the Rockefeller Foundation’s IRRI, along with their Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center and two other Rockefeller and Ford Foundation-created international research centers, the IITA for tropical agriculture, Nigeria, and IRRI for rice, Philippines, combined to form a global Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR).

CGIAR was shaped at a series of private conferences held at the Rockefeller Foundation’s conference center in Bellagio, Italy. Key participants at the Bellagio talks were the Rockefeller Foundation’s George Harrar, Ford Foundation’s Forrest Hill, Robert McNamara of the World Bank and Maurice Strong, the Rockefeller family’s international environmental organizer, who, as a Rockefeller Foundation Trustee, organized the UN Earth Summit in Stockholm in 1972. It was part of the foundation’s decades long focus to turn science to the service of eugenics, a hideous version of racial purity, what has been called The Project.

To ensure maximum impact, CGIAR drew in the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN Development Program and the World Bank. Thus, through a carefully-planned leverage of its initial funds, the Rockefeller Foundation by the beginning of the 1970’s was in a position to shape global agriculture policy. And shape it did.

Financed by generous Rockefeller and Ford Foundation study grants, CGIAR saw to it that leading Third World agriculture scientists and agronomists were brought to the US to ‘master’ the concepts of modern agribusiness production, in order to carry it back to their homeland. In the process they created an invaluable network of influence for US agribusiness promotion in those countries, most especially promotion of the GMO ‘Gene Revolution’ in developing countries, all in the name of science and efficient, free market agriculture.

Genetically engineering a master race?

Now the Svalbard Seed Bank begins to become interesting. But it gets better. ‘The Project’ I referred to is the project of the Rockefeller Foundation and powerful financial interests since the 1920’s to use eugenics, later renamed genetics, to justify creation of a genetically-engineered Master Race. Hitler and the Nazis called it the Ayran Master Race.

The eugenics of Hitler were financed to a major extent by the same Rockefeller Foundation which today is building a doomsday seed vault to preserve samples of every seed on our planet. Now this is getting really intriguing. The same Rockefeller Foundation created the pseudo-science discipline of molecular biology in their relentless pursuit of reducing human life down to the ‘defining gene sequence’ which, they hoped, could then be modified in order to change human traits at will. Hitler’s eugenics scientists, many of whom were quietly brought to the United States after the War to continue their biological eugenics research, laid much of the groundwork of genetic engineering of various life forms, much of it supported openly until well into the Third Reich by Rockefeller Foundation generous grants.2

The same Rockefeller Foundation created the so-called Green Revolution, out of a trip to Mexico in 1946 by Nelson Rockefeller and former New Deal Secretary of Agriculture and founder of the Pioneer Hi-Bred Seed Company, Henry Wallace.

The Green Revolution purported to solve the world hunger problem to a major degree in Mexico, India and other select countries where Rockefeller worked. Rockefeller Foundation agronomist, Norman Borlaug, won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work, hardly something to boast about with the likes of Henry Kissinger sharing the same.

In reality, as it years later emerged, the Green Revolution was a brilliant Rockefeller family scheme to develop a globalized agribusiness which they then could monopolize just as they had done in the world oil industry beginning a half century before. As Henry Kissinger declared in the 1970’s, ‘If you control the oil you control the country; if you control food, you control the population.’

Agribusiness and the Rockefeller Green Revolution went hand-in-hand. They were part of a grand strategy which included Rockefeller Foundation financing of research for the development of genetic engineering of plants and animals a few years later.

John H. Davis had been Assistant Agriculture Secretary under President Dwight Eisenhower in the early 1950’s. He left Washington in 1955 and went to the Harvard Graduate School of Business, an unusual place for an agriculture expert in those days. He had a clear strategy. In 1956, Davis wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review in which he declared that “the only way to solve the so-called farm problem once and for all, and avoid cumbersome government programs, is to progress from agriculture to agribusiness.” He knew precisely what he had in mind, though few others had a clue back then— a revolution in agriculture production that would concentrate control of the food chain in corporate multinational hands, away from the traditional family farmer. 3

A crucial aspect driving the interest of the Rockefeller Foundation and US agribusiness companies was the fact that the Green Revolution was based on proliferation of new hybrid seeds in developing markets. One vital aspect of hybrid seeds was their lack of reproductive capacity. Hybrids had a built in protection against multiplication. Unlike normal open pollinated species whose seed gave yields similar to its parents, the yield of the seed borne by hybrid plants was significantly lower than that of the first generation.

That declining yield characteristic of hybrids meant farmers must normally buy seed every year in order to obtain high yields. Moreover, the lower yield of the second generation eliminated the trade in seed that was often done by seed producers without the breeder’s authorization. It prevented the redistribution of the commercial crop seed by middlemen. If the large multinational seed companies were able to control the parental seed lines in house, no competitor or farmer would be able to produce the hybrid. The global concentration of hybrid seed patents into a handful of giant seed companies, led by DuPont’s Pioneer Hi-Bred and Monsanto’s Dekalb laid the ground for the later GMO seed revolution. 4

In effect, the introduction of modern American agricultural technology, chemical fertilizers and commercial hybrid seeds all made local farmers in developing countries, particularly the larger more established ones, dependent on foreign, mostly US agribusiness and petro-chemical company inputs. It was a first step in what was to be a decades-long, carefully planned process.

Under the Green Revolution Agribusiness was making major inroads into markets which were previously of limited access to US exporters. The trend was later dubbed “market-oriented agriculture.” In reality it was agribusiness-controlled agriculture.

Through the Green Revolution, the Rockefeller Foundation and later Ford Foundation worked hand-in-hand shaping and supporting the foreign policy goals of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and of the CIA.

One major effect of the Green Revolution was to depopulate the countryside of peasants who were forced to flee into shantytown slums around the cities in desperate search for work. That was no accident; it was part of the plan to create cheap labor pools for forthcoming US multinational manufactures, the ‘globalization’ of recent years.

When the self-promotion around the Green Revolution died down, the results were quite different from what had been promised. Problems had arisen from indiscriminate use of the new chemical pesticides, often with serious health consequences. The mono-culture cultivation of new hybrid seed varieties decreased soil fertility and yields over time. The first results were impressive: double or even triple yields for some crops such as wheat and later corn in Mexico. That soon faded.

The Green Revolution was typically accompanied by large irrigation projects which often included World Bank loans to construct huge new dams, and flood previously settled areas and fertile farmland in the process. Also, super-wheat produced greater yields by saturating the soil with huge amounts of fertilizer per acre, the fertilizer being the product of nitrates and petroleum, commodities controlled by the Rockefeller-dominated Seven Sisters major oil companies.

Huge quantities of herbicides and pesticides were also used, creating additional markets for the oil and chemical giants. As one analyst put it, in effect, the Green Revolution was merely a chemical revolution. At no point could developing nations pay for the huge amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. They would get the credit courtesy of the World Bank and special loans by Chase Bank and other large New York banks, backed by US Government guarantees.

Applied in a large number of developing countries, those loans went mostly to the large landowners. For the smaller peasants the situation worked differently. Small peasant farmers could not afford the chemical and other modern inputs and had to borrow money.

Initially various government programs tried to provide some loans to farmers so that they could purchase seeds and fertilizers. Farmers who could not participate in this kind of program had to borrow from the private sector. Because of the exorbitant interest rates for informal loans, many small farmers did not even get the benefits of the initial higher yields. After harvest, they had to sell most if not all of their produce to pay off loans and interest. They became dependent on money-lenders and traders and often lost their land. Even with soft loans from government agencies, growing subsistence crops gave way to the production of cash crops.5

Since decades the same interests including the Rockefeller Foundation which backed the initial Green Revolution, have worked to promote a second ‘Gene Revolution’ as Rockefeller Foundation President Gordon Conway termed it several years ago, the spread of industrial agriculture and commercial inputs including GMO patented seeds.

Gates, Rockefeller and a Green Revolution in Africa

With the true background of the 1950’s Rockefeller Foundation Green Revolution clear in mind, it becomes especially curious that the same Rockefeller Foundation along with the Gates Foundation which are now investing millions of dollars in preserving every seed against a possible “doomsday” scenario are also investing millions in a project called The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

AGRA, as it calls itself, is an alliance again with the same Rockefeller Foundation which created the “Gene Revolution.” A look at the AGRA Board of Directors confirms this.

It includes none other than former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as chairman. In his acceptance speech in a World Economic Forum event in Cape Town South Africa in June 2007, Kofi Annan stated, ‘I accept this challenge with gratitude to the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and all others who support our African campaign.’

In addition the AGRA board numbers a South African, Strive Masiyiwa who is a Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation. It includes Sylvia M. Mathews of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Mamphela Ramphele, former Managing Director of the World Bank (2000 – 2006); Rajiv J. Shah of the Gates Foundation; Nadya K. Shmavonian of the Rockefeller Foundation; Roy Steiner of the Gates Foundation. In addition, an Alliance for AGRA includes Gary Toenniessen the Managing Director of the Rockefeller Foundation and Akinwumi Adesina, Associate Director, Rockefeller Foundation.

To fill out the lineup, the Programmes for AGRA includes Peter Matlon, Managing Director, Rockefeller Foundation; Joseph De Vries, Director of the Programme for Africa’s Seed Systems and Associate Director, Rockefeller foundation; Akinwumi Adesina, Associate Director, Rockefeller Foundation. Like the old failed Green Revolution in India and Mexico, the new Africa Green Revolution is clearly a high priority of the Rockefeller Foundation.

While to date they are keeping a low profile, Monsanto and the major GMO agribusiness giants are believed at the heart of using Kofi Annan’s AGRA to spread their patented GMO seeds across Africa under the deceptive label, ‘bio-technology,’ the new euphemism for genetically engineered patented seeds. To date South Africa is the only African country permitting legal planting of GMO crops. In 2003 Burkina Faso authorized GMO trials. In 2005 Kofi Annan’s Ghana drafted bio-safety legislation and key officials expressed their intentions to pursue research into GMO crops.

Africa is the next target in the US-government campaign to spread GMO worldwide. Its rich soils make it an ideal candidate. Not surprisingly many African governments suspect the worst from the GMO sponsors as a multitude of genetic engineering and biosafety projects have been initiated in Africa, with the aim of introducing GMOs into Africa’s agricultural systems. These include sponsorships offered by the US government to train African scientists in genetic engineering in the US, biosafety projects funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank; GMO research involving African indigenous food crops.

The Rockefeller Foundation has been working for years to promote, largely without success, projects to introduce GMOs into the fields of Africa. They have backed research that supports the applicability of GMO cotton in the Makhathini Flats in South Africa.

Monsanto, who has a strong foothold in South Africa’s seed industry, both GMO and hybrid, has conceived of an ingenious smallholders’ programme known as the ‘Seeds of Hope’ Campaign, which is introducing a green revolution package to small scale poor farmers, followed, of course, by Monsanto’s patented GMO seeds. 6

Syngenta AG of Switzerland, one of the ‘Four Horsemen of the GMO Apocalypse’ is pouring millions of dollars into a new greenhouse facility in Nairobi, to develop GMO insect resistant maize. Syngenta is a part of CGIAR as well.7

Move on to Svalbard

Now is it simply philosophical sloppiness? What leads the Gates and Rockefeller foundations to at one and the same time to back proliferation of patented and soon-to-be Terminator patented seeds across Africa, a process which, as it has in every other place on earth, destroys the plant seed varieties as monoculture industrialized agribusiness is introduced? At the same time they invest tens of millions of dollars to preserve every seed variety known in a bomb-proof doomsday vault near the remote Arctic Circle ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future’ to restate their official release?

It is no accident that the Rockefeller and Gates foundations are teaming up to push a GMO-style Green Revolution in Africa at the same time they are quietly financing the ‘doomsday seed vault’ on Svalbard. The GMO agribusiness giants are up to their ears in the Svalbard project.

Indeed, the entire Svalbard enterprise and the people involved call up the worst catastrophe images of the Michael Crichton bestseller, Andromeda Strain, a sci-fi thriller where a deadly disease of extraterrestrial origin causes rapid, fatal clotting of the blood threatening the entire human species. In Svalbard, the future world’s most secure seed repository will be guarded by the policemen of the GMO Green Revolution–the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations, Syngenta, DuPont and CGIAR.

The Svalbard project will be run by an organization called the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT). Who are they to hold such an awesome trust over the planet’s entire seed varieties? The GCDT was founded by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Bioversity International (formerly the International Plant Genetic Research Institute), an offshoot of the CGIAR.

The Global Crop Diversity Trust is based in Rome. Its Board is chaired by Margaret Catley-Carlson a Canadian also on the advisory board of Group Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux, one of the world’s largest private water companies. Catley-Carlson was also president until 1998 of the New York-based Population Council, John D. Rockefeller’s population reduction organization, set up in 1952 to advance the Rockefeller family’s eugenics program under the cover of promoting “family planning,” birth control devices, sterilization and “population control” in developing countries.

Other GCDT board members include former Bank of America executive presently head of the Hollywood DreamWorks Animation, Lewis Coleman. Coleman is also the lead Board Director of Northrup Grumman Corporation, one of America’s largest military industry Pentagon contractors.

Jorio Dauster (Brazil) is also Board Chairman of Brasil Ecodiesel. He is a former Ambassador of Brazil to the European Union, and Chief Negotiator of Brazil’s foreign debt for the Ministry of Finance. Dauster has also served as President of the Brazilian Coffee Institute and as Coordinator of the Project for the Modernization of Brazil’s Patent System, which involves legalizing patents on seeds which are genetically modified, something until recently forbidden by Brazil’s laws.

Cary Fowler is the Trust’s Executive Director. Fowler was Professor and Director of Research in the Department for International Environment & Development Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. He was also a Senior Advisor to the Director General of Bioversity International. There he represented the Future Harvest Centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in negotiations on the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources. In the 1990s, he headed the International Program on Plant Genetic Resources at the FAO. He drafted and supervised negotiations of FAO’s Global Plan of Action for Plant Genetic Resources, adopted by 150 countries in 1996. He is a past-member of the National Plant Genetic Resources Board of the US and the Board of Trustees of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, another Rockefeller Foundation and CGIAR project.

GCDT board member Dr. Mangala Rai of India is the Secretary of India’s Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), and Director General of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR). He is also a Board Member of the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), which promoted the world’s first major GMO experiment, the much-hyped ‘Golden Rice’ which proved a failure. Rai has served as Board Member for CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center), and a Member of the Executive Council of the CGIAR.

Global Crop Diversity Trust Donors or financial angels include as well, in the words of the Humphrey Bogart Casablanca classic, ‘all the usual suspects.’ As well as the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations, the Donors include GMO giants DuPont-Pioneer Hi-Bred, Syngenta of Basle Switzerland, CGIAR and the State Department’s energetically pro-GMO agency for development aid, USAID. Indeed it seems we have the GMO and population reduction foxes guarding the hen-house of mankind, the global seed diversity store in Svalbard. 8

Why now Svalbard?

We can legitimately ask why Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation along with the major genetic engineering agribusiness giants such as DuPont and Syngenta, along with CGIAR are building the Doomsday Seed Vault in the Arctic.

Who uses such a seed bank in the first place? Plant breeders and researchers are the major users of gene banks. Today’s largest plant breeders are Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta and Dow Chemical, the global plant-patenting GMO giants. Since early in 2007 Monsanto holds world patent rights together with the United States Government for plant so-called ‘Terminator’ or Genetic Use Restriction Technology (GURT). Terminator is an ominous technology by which a patented commercial seed commits ‘suicide’ after one harvest. Control by private seed companies is total. Such control and power over the food chain has never before in the history of mankind existed.

This clever genetically engineered terminator trait forces farmers to return every year to Monsanto or other GMO seed suppliers to get new seeds for rice, soybeans, corn, wheat whatever major crops they need to feed their population. If broadly introduced around the world, it could within perhaps a decade or so make the world’s majority of food producers new feudal serfs in bondage to three or four giant seed companies such as Monsanto or DuPont or Dow Chemical.

That, of course, could also open the door to have those private companies, perhaps under orders from their host government, Washington, deny seeds to one or another developing country whose politics happened to go against Washington’s. Those who say ‘It can’t happen here’ should look more closely at current global events. The mere existence of that concentration of power in three or four private US-based agribusiness giants is grounds for legally banning all GMO crops even were their harvest gains real, which they manifestly are not.

These private companies, Monsato, DuPont, Dow Chemical hardly have an unsullied record in terms of stewardship of human life. They developed and proliferated such innovations as dioxin, PCBs, Agent Orange. They covered up for decades clear evidence of carcinogenic and other severe human health consequences of use of the toxic chemicals. They have buried serious scientific reports that the world’s most widespread herbicide, glyphosate, the essential ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide that is tied to purchase of most Monsanto genetically engineered seeds, is toxic when it seeps into drinking water.9 Denmark banned glyphosate in 2003 when it confirmed it has contaminated the country’s groundwater.10

The diversity stored in seed gene banks is the raw material for plant breeding and for a great deal of basic biological research. Several hundred thousand samples are distributed annually for such purposes. The UN’s FAO lists some 1400 seed banks around the world, the largest being held by the United States Government. Other large banks are held by China, Russia, Japan, India, South Korea, Germany and Canada in descending order of size. In addition, CGIAR operates a chain of seed banks in select centers around the world.

CGIAR, set up in 1972 by the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation to spread their Green Revolution agribusiness model, controls most of the private seed banks from the Philippines to Syria to Kenya. In all these present seed banks hold more than six and a half million seed varieties, almost two million of which are ‘distinct.’ Svalbard’s Doomsday Vault will have a capacity to house four and a half million different seeds.

GMO as a weapon of biowarfare?

Now we come to the heart of the danger and the potential for misuse inherent in the Svalbard project of Bill Gates and the Rockefeller foundation. Can the development of patented seeds for most of the world’s major sustenance crops such as rice, corn, wheat, and feed grains such as soybeans ultimately be used in a horrible form of biological warfare?

The explicit aim of the eugenics lobby funded by wealthy elite families such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harriman and others since the 1920’s, has embodied what they termed ‘negative eugenics,’ the systematic killing off of undesired bloodlines. Margaret Sanger, a rapid eugenicist, the founder of Planned Parenthood International and an intimate of the Rockefeller family, created something called The Negro Project in 1939, based in Harlem, which as she confided in a letter to a friend, was all about the fact that, as she put it, ‘we want to exterminate the Negro population.’ 11

A small California biotech company, Epicyte, in 2001 announced the development of genetically engineered corn which contained a spermicide which made the semen of men who ate it sterile. At the time Epicyte had a joint venture agreement to spread its technology with DuPont and Syngenta, two of the sponsors of the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Vault. Epicyte was since acquired by a North Carolina biotech company. Astonishing to learn was that Epicyte had developed its spermicidal GMO corn with research funds from the US Department of Agriculture, the same USDA which, despite worldwide opposition, continued to finance the development of Terminator technology, now held by Monsanto.

In the 1990’s the UN’s World Health Organization launched a campaign to vaccinate millions of women in Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines between the ages of 15 and 45, allegedly against Tentanus, a sickness arising from such things as stepping on a rusty nail. The vaccine was not given to men or boys, despite the fact they are presumably equally liable to step on rusty nails as women.

Because of that curious anomaly, Comite Pro Vida de Mexico, a Roman Catholic lay organization became suspicious and had vaccine samples tested. The tests revealed that the Tetanus vaccine being spread by the WHO only to women of child-bearing age contained human Chorionic Gonadotrophin or hCG, a natural hormone which when combined with a tetanus toxoid carrier stimulated antibodies rendering a woman incapable of maintaining a pregnancy. None of the women vaccinated were told.

It later came out that the Rockefeller Foundation along with the Rockefeller’s Population Council, the World Bank (home to CGIAR), and the United States’ National Institutes of Health had been involved in a 20-year-long project begun in 1972 to develop the concealed abortion vaccine with a tetanus carrier for WHO. In addition, the Government of Norway, the host to the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Vault, donated $41 million to develop the special abortive Tetanus vaccine. 12

Is it a coincidence that these same organizations, from Norway to the Rockefeller Foundation to the World Bank are also involved in the Svalbard seed bank project? According to Prof. Francis Boyle who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by the US Congress, the Pentagon is ‘now gearing up to fight and win biological warfare’ as part of two Bush national strategy directives adopted, he notes, ‘without public knowledge and review’ in 2002. Boyle adds that in 2001-2004 alone the US Federal Government spent $14.5 billion for civilian bio-warfare-related work, a staggering sum.

Rutgers University biologist Richard Ebright estimates that over 300 scientific institutions and some 12,000 individuals in the USA today have access to pathogens suitable for biowarfare. Alone there are 497 US Government NIH grants for research into infectious diseases with biowarfare potential. Of course this is being justified under the rubric of defending against possible terror attack as so much is today.

Many of the US Government dollars spent on biowarfare research involve genetic engineering. MIT biology professor Jonathan King says that the ‘growing bio-terror programs represent a significant emerging danger to our own population.’ King adds, ‘while such programs are always called defensive, with biological weapons, defensive and offensive programs overlap almost completely.’ 13

Time will tell whether, God Forbid, the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Bank of Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation is part of another Final Solution, this involving the extinction of the Late, Great Planet Earth.

Notes:

1 F. William Engdahl, Seeds of Destruction, Montreal, (Global Research, 2007).

2 Ibid, pp.72-90.

3 John H. Davis, Harvard Business Review, 1956, cited in Geoffrey Lawrence, Agribusiness, Capitalism and the Countryside, Pluto Press, Sydney, 1987. See also Harvard Business School, The Evolution of an Industry and a Seminar: Agribusiness Seminar, http://www.exed.hbs.edu/programs/agb/seminar.html.

4 Engdahl, op cit., p. 130.

5 Ibid. P. 123-30.

6 Myriam Mayet, The New Green Revolution in Africa: Trojan Horse for GMOs?, May, 2007, African Centre for Biosafety, www.biosafetyafrica.net.

7 ETC Group, Green Revolution 2.0 for Africa?, Communique Issue #94, March/April 2007.

8 Global Crop Diversity Trust website, in http://www.croptrust.org/main/donors.php.

9 Engdahl, op. cit., pp.227-236.

10 Anders Legarth Smith, Denmark Bans Glyphosates, the Active Ingredient in Roundup, Politiken, September 15, 2003, in organic.com.au/news/2003.09.15.

11 Tanya L. Green, The Negro Project: Margaret Sanger’s Genocide Project for Black American’s, in www.blackgenocide.org/negro.html.

12 Engdahl, op. cit., pp. 273-275; J.A. Miller, Are New Vaccines Laced With Birth-Control Drugs?, HLI Reports, Human Life International, Gaithersburg, Maryland; June/July 1995, Volume 13, Number 8.

13 Sherwood Ross, Bush Developing Illegal Bioterror Weapons for Offensive Use,’ December 20, 2006, in www.truthout.org.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

GM seeds ready to destroy world

Norway's prime minister opens doomsday seed vault in Arctic

Now that the elite have put away stores of normal seeds, we are ready for world destruction with genetically modified seeds/food.

LONGYEARBYEN, Norway: Norway opened a frozen "doomsday" vault Tuesday deep within an Arctic mountain where millions of seeds will be stored to safeguard against wars or natural disasters wiping out food crops around the globe.

Biblical references repeatedly cropped up as guests at the opening ceremony carried the first seed deposits into the vault in the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.

"This is a frozen Garden of Eden," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said, standing in one of the frosty vaults against a backdrop of large discs made of ice.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg called the vault an "insurance policy" and added his own biblical comparison: "It is the Noah's Ark for securing biological diversity for future generations."

Svalbard Global Seed Vault, just 620 miles from the North Pole, is designed to house as many as 4.5 million crop seeds from all over the world. It is built to withstand global warming, earthquakes and even nuclear strikes.
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The vault, built by the Norwegian government for $9.1 million, will operate like a bank box. Norway owns the bank, but the countries depositing seeds own them and can used them as needed free of charge.

Daily operations will be overseen by NorGen, a gene bank in an old coal mine on Svalbard that is jointly owned by the Nordic countries.

The vault will serve as a backup to the other 1,400 seed banks around the world, in case their deposits are lost. War wiped out seed banks in Iraq and Afghanistan, and another bank in the Philippines was flooded in the wake of a typhoon in 2006.

"It is very important for Africa to store seeds here because anything can happen to our national seed banks," said 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai of Kenya. She is a board member of Global Crop Diversity Trust board, which collects the seeds for the Svalbard vault.

The group was founded by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and Biodiversity International, a Rome-based research group.

"Crop diversity will soon prove to be our most potent and indispensable resource for addressing climate change, water and energy supply constraints, and for meeting the food needs of a growing population," said Cary Fowler, head of the trust.

Stoltenberg and Maathai made the first deposit in the vault — a box of rice seeds from 104 countries. Guests at the ceremony carried dozens of other boxes through the steel and concrete-lined tunnel leading to the vaults.

The seeds are packed in silvery foil containers — as many as 500 in each sample — and placed on blue and orange metal shelves inside three 32-by-88-foot storage chambers. Each vault can hold 1.5 million sample packages of all types of crop seeds, from carrots to wheat.

Svalbard is cold, but giant air conditioning units have chilled the vault further to -0.4 degrees, a temperature at which experts say many seeds could last for 1,000 years.

After the ceremony, Stoltenberg and Barroso took a three-hour helicopter tour of the remote region. They landed on a vast glacier and stopped at the research stations of Ny-Aalesund, some 60 miles northwest of Longyearbyen, the main settlement on Svalbard.

Stoltenberg told reporters that he wanted Barroso to see the effects of climate change in the form of melting ice.

Barroso said such melting glaciers show that "we see the need to act ... to avoid real challenges to balance in the life of our planet."

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On the Net:

http://www.croptrust.org

http://www.seedvault.no