Modern Evil: Terminator Seeds & The White List

There are two evils that farmers and people who pay attention have been fighting:

Sterile Seed and The White List.

Terminator seed, pushed by these corporations - Abbott Laboratories, AgrEvo, BASF, Bayer, Cheminova, Cyanimid, Degesch America Inc., Dow Agrosciences, Dupont, Engage Agro, Gustafson, Hedley Technologies, IPCO, Monsanto, Norac Concepts, Novartis, Nufarm, Peacock Industries, Rhone Poulenc, Rohm & Haas, Untited Agri Products, Van Waters & Rogers and Zeneca Agro - is sterile. The goal in producing crops that produce only sterile seed is so that farmers around the world to have to buy seeds every year.

The traditional practice (tried and tested for thousands of years) of saving seeds for the next harvest has come under threat due to a US patent on technology to prevent "unauthorized seed-saving" by farmers.

This perverse technology's function is to take what was give to us freely by God - seed - and make it the sole possession of those corporations who own it.

The twin goals are power over the world's people and increased profit, based upon greed for both.

The result must be increased poverty, misery and starvation in a world in which 3 Billion people already are wretchedly poor and nearly a billion are starving to death.

By making all food - and the right to grow food - the property of one corporation or another, corporations can tell all of us: pay or die.

Such a move in no way honors life. It is counter to Christian principles of sharing.

In fact, such a move is evil in its purest form, for good always enhances life, creates joy and alleviates suffering. Good does not shut off the world's food supply.

I've been reading Victor Frankls' Man's Search For Meaning in which he wrote of his experience in a Nazi concentration camp and how starvation affects the whole person and makes life unbearable.

Most people in the United States have no idea about what starvation does to a person.

On the contrary, we are overfed and most of us are constantly concerned about losing weight even as billions around the world starve.

Yet, with global climate changes on the horizon, all we need is a few crop failures to make us lose those extra pounds pretty fast. This administration - generally asleep on every issue while it works to misinform Americans - is pro-corporation in every way and now has even allowed our national grain stores to diminish.

Shall we, on top of this, allow development of this obscene technology which could result in widespread famine and the death of billions?

Canada - infiltrated by American corporations who are striving for deep integration with the U.S. which strives to privatize Canadian health care and get rid of the social services that make Canada such a great place to live - has, thanks to its farmers, failed to end Canada's ban on terminator seeds.

But the threat isn't over. Corporations intend to own everything and control everyone. They are doing a very good job of it and have a good friend in George Bush.

As the Bush administration flogs Canada for brilliantly stopping a terrorist attack, ignorant, opportunistic politicians such as John Hostettler misinform the public about Canada's being a "haven" for terrorists.

Make no mistake, this laughable charge - countered by Michael Chertoff - has really one political goal in mind: to slip the noose tighter around Canada, force her to abandon her independent foreign policy and force an end to her socially progressive domestic policies which make Canadians better paid and healthier than Americans - in order to engineer privatization of her medical system, water and anything everything American corporations can get their hands on.

Canada is a good friend to the U.S. Yet Americans are abysmally ignorant about her and her people. Rick Mercer has lampooned this ignorance - which is appalling - in his "Talking To Americans" comedy specials.

But Americans are not just ignorant about Canada. We are ignorant of what is happening in our own country and how the noose is being tightened around our own throats.

Another example of modern evil is The White List, a proposed law to ban the import, movement and cultivation of over 99 percent of the world’s plant species.

As J.L. Hudson of The Fruit Gardener writes:

"Backed by corporate herbicide manufacturers and the Exotic Pest Plant Councils, the new law will ban any plant not on the government-approved "White List."

All species will be considered guilty until proven innocent. Expensive safety testing will be required by law for all new plants before they are approved for possession and propagation. Thus, only major corporations will be able to afford to introduce new plants into cultivation.

We already have adequate weed prevention laws--it makes no sense to ban virtually the entire plant kingdom "just in case." This is equivalent to the government announcing that only 'pre-approved' books, magazine articles, etc., would be allowed, and all new writings would have to pass through government censors before publication. The world’s biological diversity has been likened to a great library and now government book-burners will be in charge."

While current law 'blacklists known harmful plants'; everything else is permitted.

Under the White List - recommended by a government organization formed to promote it, the National Invasive Species Council (NISC)- 'everything is prohibited except what is on the list.'

This law will extend government and corporate control over the possession, importation and movement of anything that is alive - plants, animals, fungi, microorganisms, everything.

Once in place, only the limited "white list" of government-approved species will be permitted - all other species will be considered contraband, with penalties for possession and mandated extermination.

To add a species to the White List, expensive "safety testing" and "risk assessment" will be required for approval. Randy Westbrooks, of the USDA, stated that the testing should be similar to the 30 to 40 million-dollar safety testing required to market a new toxic chemical.

To offset the cost of testing, it has been proposed that a new form of life patent be granted, giving sole rights to the entire species and its genome to the corporation paying for the testing (it being unlikely that individuals will be able to afford such testing), and granting complete immunity to the patent holder of the species becomes a pest.

This will place over 99% of the natural world off-limits - it is the greatest "theft of the commons" from humanity, and the greatest extension of government and corporate control over the natural world in history."

Write to your Senators and Representatives, for what God gave you and your brothers and sisters across the globe is about to be taken away by corporations.

For more information on this pernicious law, visit No White List.

Thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord? Acts 13:10

In the day shalt thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt thou make thy seed to flourish; but the harvest shall be a heap in the day of grief. Isaiah 17:11

Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? Wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously? Jeremiah 12:1

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil. Isaiah 5:20

Take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day. Ephesians 6:13

The Lord God made every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew. Genesis 2:4,5

Joy and gladness is taken from the plentiful field. Jeremiah 48:33