Chile Forum

Well, while all the University new age hippy feel good (but do nothing) environmentalist were out throwing rocks at the police in Santiago over the environmental red hearing of that little old dam down in the Patagonia that will take 12 years to build ( yes, the dam is bad for the environment, but Chile has way more serious problems), Monsanto, makers of agent orange and majority shareholder in Global Famine, inc, managed to slip in the backdoor of the Chilean congress.

The Chilean congress ratified a treaty on agro patent protection for genetically modified seeds to be sold and protected in Chile. Now they get to do to the small Chilean farmers, what they did in the U.S. and just about everywhere else in the World they could get this treaty and similar laws in the door.

http://www.upov.int/en/publications/con ... ct1991.htm

By the way, this is what the U.S. is talking about when they scold Chile for loose IP law enforcement (in the same breath they always talk about terrorism). They are not talking about bootleg video tapes being sold in the streets of Santiago.

You only need to look to what they did to the soybean market in the United States, to see how devastating that company is to the biodiversity of the agro-industry and the way they monopolize and crushed anyone that wants to do anything other than buy their seeds. Among many other things, they have systematically black mailed farms in the United States in to planting their seeds or face bankruptcy in court defending themselves. Even farmers that do not plant their seeds. If their neighbors do and the seeds contaminated their fields, they have to prove in court that they did not plant them. If they try to save their seeds for the next year, they are sued for patent infringement. They have sued the guys that help save the seeds for the next year out of business, so no one can save the seeds.

UPOV y lobby empresarial

La Unión Internacional para la Protección de las Obtenciones Vegetales, UPOV, es una organización propiciada por las transnacionales comercializadoras de semillas y respaldada por los gobiernos, de la que Chile es parte. En los primeros años producían híbridos y hoy también transgénicos. Entre ellas están las empresas Monsanto –que controla más del 90% del mercado de la semilla transgénica- Syngenta, Bayer, y Dupont/Pioneer. Las ventas de semillas y plaguicidas les reportan enormes ganancias a costa de la destrucción de la agricultura campesina, remplazada por la agroindustria y los monocultivos de semillas transgénicas. El precio de los alimentos, según FAO, se encuentra actualmente en los niveles más altos de la historia.

El Convenio Internacional para la Protección de las Obtenciones Vegetales (Convenio UPOV) ha sido modificado en tres oportunidades: 1972, 1978 y 1991. En Chile el exitoso lobby empresarial para que Chile, firmante de UPOV 78, adhiriese a UPOV 91 fue encabezado por Monsanto a través de ChileBio con el apoyo de ANPROS (la asociación gremial de productores de semilla transgénica de exportación) y del Diario Financiero, virtual vocero del negocio de exportación de semilla transgénica. El gobierno y senado chileno finalmente se rindieron a la presión adicional del Presidente Obama, cercano a Monsanto, quien traía en su agenda de visita a Chile, el tema del respeto a la propiedad intelectual.

some More on what to expect:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/feat ... anto200805

http://www.organicconsumers.org/article ... _19185.cfm

http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=26

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-1 ... train.html


Google away for a lot more on them.

In my opinion, if there is a single company or organization in the World that threatens the very existence of the Human species, Monsanto is it.

When the World looses the right to produce its' own food, all other rights are irrelevant.

more

http://ecosalon.com/soy-powerful-how-mo ... consumers/

A most interesting link between Monsanto's tactics of getting in bed with environmental causes, to spin their PR position:
http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/3417

Monsanto's largesse is infiltrating other public institutions and nonprofit organizations, as well. In Oct. 2008 Monsanto gave UW-Madison a fresh $1 million towards graduate level PhD research in plant breeding and genetics. This follows years of other multi-million dollar investments in Wisconsin's land grant college system. In Dec. 2008 Monsanto also gave $5 million towards water quality programs in the Mississippi River Basin with its new "conservation partners" the Nature Conservancy, National Audubon Society, Iowa Soybean Association, and the American Corn Growers Association. In 2009 the Monsanto Fund even gave $10,000 to the Madison Children's Museum for its four season "Rooftop Ramble" park project. Ironically enough, the maker of Round-Up and scores of other toxins gave the Madison Children's Museum another grant in 2008 for their Leap into Lakes program. No doubt the children did NOT learn about Monsanto's leading role in water contamination...

Of all the news that would rightfully cause a riot, my money says this story simply goes away. We told everyone we could in 1998 what Monsanto was doing and after a brief intro, you can see the glaze forming in the eyes.... no one will give a hoot until the food is no longer available, or available only from one source. Ooops, too late.

Then on the other hand, Mansanto might have met their match in the average Chilean campo farmer. They will just shrug their shoulders, say "si", and keep on planting their seeds.

Not when they start using the police and courts......imagine the the small farmer in Indiana who keeps planting his own seeds from his own soybeans, the one who never used Monsanto soybeans.....well the farmers around him did and before long his seeds were mixed Monsanto and so along comes Monsanto and accuse him of intellectual property theft. Never mind those Monsanto soybeans invaded his farm...

How about the farmers committing suicide in the thousands in India because Mansanto seed ruined them. I doubt any Chilean farmers is going to get that kind of upset about it, but they will more likly just sell out their farms to guys that will use the Mansanto seeds.

The little guys have been slowly going away in Chile for some time. Industrialized farming has been here for a very long time. Still, I can buy all small compo produce if I so choose very easily where I live.

I am really not against GMO food, done right, and properly regulated. We have been manipulating the food supply for thousands of years. I don't really believe a cow popped out of the woods one day 10,000 years ago and asked the first shmuck it saw if he would like to milk it, or that corn on the cob was always so big that it filled a plate.

What I am more against is the monopolizing the world's food supply. Empires (and their armies) have always been built and destroyed in direct relationship to their food supply. Those with the gold make the rules, until they are hungry. That is the real golden rule.

We are going to see another 2-3 billion people stacked on this planet in very short order. Agricultural land already is the new Gold. If you can control what is done with it, well, that is the whole show.

I already marvel at the thought of how cramped the World has become, just in my short life span with people. What will it be like in another 35 years? I keep thinking about that classic star trek episode with all the people crammed on a planet, and no one is ever alone because there is no space.

Still, think I will plant a garden this spring.

And if you really want to get more of that tight feeling in your chest, just check out this hour and a half documentary for free:

http://www.thefutureoffood.com/onlinevideo.html

There are more details on Monsanto's m.o. for twisting the knife in deeper and deeper. Be sure to have your bottle of red popped wide open by the time the interviewees describe plans for Monsanto's terminator gene. Under this scheme the farmer has to buy seed every year, i.e. farmer can't even derive next season's seed from his original Monsanto stock because the terminator gene seed's first filial generation is hence born sterilized, self-terminated. Now, I suppose most farmers, above a certain acreage and/or subsidy schedule, buy their seed new each year due to "economies of scale". But hey, you now, while they're at it, wouldn't want a poverty end user of Monsanto's product only buying the first year, then replanting with collected seeds. Also begs the question: does anyone know what happens to a GMO seeds' subsequent generations?

truly crappy! thanks for all the links!

There is already the seed scandal in Chile, where the public research group sold the government owned seeds to a private company, that was then bought out by guess who? Monsanto.

http://www.piensachile.com/content/view/8689/1/

By the way Monsanto operates under several other names in Chile. Will try to parse out the big ones and post them. Guess their own name has been fairly well trashed.

admin wrote:.I am really not against GMO food, done right, and properly regulated. We have been manipulating the food supply for thousands of years. .

Still, think I will plant a garden this spring.

I think the operative words there are "done right", and I would argue it is never done right if it can be done cheaper to improve the bottom line. I did a thesis paper on rBGH... recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone for those that don't make a hobby of keeping up with freakin evils coming out of Monsanto. Combine Monsanto with our government placing them in charge of the FDA, and wait for the DSTHF... deadly shit to hit the fan.

Google how Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream was sued by our friends for saying that they didn't put rBGH in the ice cream. Or google "pus" (as in infection) and milk. And NOBODY can stop them. Last I heard, Canada banned rBGH but that was several years ago.

There are seed clubs on the internet... for now, at least until they claim that people may be sending seeds to some Arab country as an act of terrorism.

But not to worry, Dancing with the Fools or American Idiot Idol is on tonight, so nothing to see here, just move along.

And there is a HUGE difference in "breeding" for selection versus genetic manipulation. When was the last time Mother Nature mixed Cod genes into a tomato to prevent frostbite? C'mon Admin, you know you don't approve of Frankenfood??

Yes, the done right bit should be underlined. I do believe with fully funded, independent research, proper oversight, regulation, and so on, it can be done right. In theory. That is the problem with such thing, trying to derive an "is" from the "ought", plus define the "right by what" factor, makes it something to stay away from until it can be clearly done right.

Still, the direct issue at hand is only kind of about the right and wrong of Gentic manipulation (which I am overall inclined towards a complete ban on it Globaly, even for research purposes). It is far more about using that as a premise along with patent laws (they are claiming patent rights to naturally produced seeds also) to control the World's food supply by just one company.

Not just control it, but put it in such a precarious situation that potentially billions of people could die if even the slightest thing goes wrong. Monsanto could put us all back in the stone age nearly overnight if even half of their crops were to fail for some reason. Imagine 4-5 billion starving people (we already have political instability related to food prices around the World), and what those people are willing to do? More importantly, what their leaders are willing to do. Think about what has happened just with the little blip in the Russian wheat harvest last year. Imagine say, 20% of the soybeans, corn, or other crops failed do to simply unusuel drought conditions one year? Mansanto would simply claim it was the weather, and I am sure they would never be blamed for forcing seeds on farmers that can not resist the conditions.

As it stands now, there is no indication that there will ever be an opportunity to do it right. It sure will not be done by Mansanto. The depth of evil this company is willing to engage in is breathtaking. It makes BofA and and Citi bank crooks simply look like bumbling idiots by comparison. Even worse, there is no checks on them, anywhere. There is nothing to counter them. They have invaded countries from the top down, at all levels.

This link was pasted to me for this movie "the world according to mansanto".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH4OwBYD ... re=related

admin wrote:The depth of evil this company is willing to engage in is breathtaking. It makes BofA and and Citi bank crooks simply look like bumbling idiots by comparison. Even worse, there is no checks on them, anywhere. There is nothing to counter them. They have invaded countries from the top down, at all levels.

Yep, they literally own the "public" quasi-government and governmental policy, legal and enforcement arms not to mention they have their own private intelligence and merc force as they recently purchased XE (formerly know as Blackwater). Scarier than scared $hit IMO.

¡¡¡NO OGM!!!