Society's ChildS


Red Flag

Monsanto's maize: High risks, few rewards for Mexico

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© ReutersMexico is the 'centre of origin' for maize.
Why is Monsanto interested in Mexico's maize market?

I'd come to Mexico to investigate the ongoing controversy over the proposed introduction of genetically modified (GM) maize into the birthplace of this important global food crop. The issue was hot, because last October a Mexican judge had issued an injunction halting all experimental and commercial planting of GM maize, a process that was well underway in six northern states. The ruling cited the need for precaution to ensure that Mexico's rich diversity of maize varieties were protected from inadvertent "gene flow" from GM maize. (See my earlier article on the injunction.)

As I began to investigate this most controversial of biotech initiatives, the question that most puzzled me was: why anyone in Mexico thinks the country needs anything that transgenic maize has to offer?

Monsanto, of course, had an answer to that question. I met with a group of company officials in their high-rise offices in Mexico City's transnational business district of Santa Fe. They offered their "Vision 2020", in which transgenic maize is key to feeding the world. In Mexico, they argued, it would help double Mexican maize production, reduce persistent rural poverty among the country's small-scale maize farmers, restore the country's self-sufficiency in its key food staple and reduce the negative environmental impacts of maize farming. They even used the term "food sovereignty" to describe their goal for Mexico. This was more than a vision; this was a hallucination.

Bell

Death toll rises to at least 74 from General Motors' faulty ignition switches

GM faulty ignition switch
© abc News
The death toll in General Motors' faulty ignition switch is at least 74, according to a Reuters analysis of government fatal-crash data.

GM claims faulty cars are to blame for 13 deaths only, but the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says the toll is higher.

Such accidents also occurred at a higher rate in the GM cars than in top competitors' models, Reuters said after searching the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), a national database of crash information submitted by local law-enforcement agencies, for single-car frontal collisions where no front air bags deployed and the driver or
front-seat passenger was killed.

The frequency of such accidents in the Ion was nearly six times that of the Corolla and twice that of the Focus, according to the analysis. The Ion had 5.9 such fatal crashes per 100,000 cars sold, followed by the Cobalt, with 4.1, the Ford Focus with 2.9, the Civic with 1.6, and the Corolla with 1.0.

Comment: A fine of $35 million is merely a little slap on the wrist. They knew about it since 2004 and most likely all the way back to 2001, but did nothing until February 2014. That is simply criminel and only goes to show that psychopaths care nought about human beings.


Pharoah

Anti-monarchy protesters demand referendum following Spanish king's abdication

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© Reuters / Vincent WestAnti-royalist protesters attend a demonstration in Bilbao June 2, 2014
Tens of thousands across Spain have taken to the streets to demand a referendum on whether the country should keep its monarchy or be proclaimed a republic following the abdication of King Juan Carlos I.

The biggest rally, held in Madrid's Puerta del Sol square, united anti-monarchist activists under the 'Monarchy No Thanks' campaign.

Royal rise & fall: 8 key moments of King Juan Carlos' reign

Thousands of people carrying Republican flags flooded the capital hours after the 76-year-old monarch announced his resignation in favor of his 46 year-old son. Spain's 15-M social movement launched the proposal for a protest against the monarchy and the declaration of a republic.

Cult

Canadian academics conclude holy reputation of Mother Teresa nothing but hype

Mother Teresa

Canadian academics trawled through 96 per cent of all originally researched literature on the Catholic icon and concluded that her reputation as one of the holiest women of the twentieth century was the product of hype.

Researchers allege missing funds for humanitarian work and homes for the poor that did not offer the medical care they required, leaving many to die.

Serge Larivée, a researcher from the University of Montreal, said: "Given the parsimonious management of Mother Theresa's works, one may ask where the millions of dollars for the poorest of the poor have gone?"

Christopher Hitchens is cited in the report and Hitch spoke out loudly against Mother Teresa in 2003. Here's a taste:

"MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.

Comment: If you have any lingering doubts as to the 'saintliness' of Mother Teresa, read a bit more here:

Mother Teresa: Anything but a saint...
Debunking another contemporary myth: New exposé of Mother Teresa shows that she and the Vatican were even worse than we thought
Mother Teresa: Sadistic religious fanatic guilty of medical malpractice


Bad Guys

Western-backed rebels kill 102-year-old Syrian man in Alawite massacre - report

Syria, ISIL
© (Reuters / Hamid Khatib)ARCHIVE PHOTO: Damage is seen inside a former base used by fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), after they withdrew from the town of Azaz, near the Syrian-Turkish border, March 11, 2014.
A 102-year-old Syrian man was shot dead while sleeping, along with his entire family, according to a new report of atrocities committed by the merciless ISIL jihadist group fighting the forces of Bashar Assad.

The radical rebels from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) also murdered the man's son, his grandson, his great-granddaughter, and her mother, AFP reported, citing the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The killing took place as ISIL attacked the village of Zanuba in Hama governorate.

"Some members of the family were burned alive, others killed in their sleep," the Observatory added.

The family was from the minority Alawite group - an offshoot of Shia Islam, to which Syrian President Bashar Assad belongs.

Comment: And yet, the US and its allies arm and protect these thugs.


Bomb

Mission Accomplished: Up to 800 killed in Iraq in May, two-thirds of them civilians

Iraq, Bombing
© (AFP Photo / ALI Al-Saadi)Iraqis inspect destruction in the street following an explosion the previous day in Sadr City, Baghdad's northern Shiite-majority district, on May 29, 2014.
Almost 800 people were reported to have been killed in Iraqi violence last month, two-thirds of the victims being civilians. Meanwhile, monitoring groups put the figure at over 1,000 deaths among the civil population alone.

Of the 799 people killed, 603 were civilians and 196 were members of the Iraqi security forces, according to the United Nations numbers released on Sunday.

The country has been hit by a wave of violent attacks since April 2013. Over the past year, Sunni Islamist insurgents have been overtaking territories and regaining momentum in Iraq, and many have fallen victim to their attacks.

Attention

Hunger leads to revolution: World Bank warns of food riots

food riot
A new report issued by the World Bank (1) warns that food prices are skyrocketing globally, with wheat up 18 percent and corn up 12 percent this quarter. Ukraine, one of the largest wheat exporters in the world, has suffered a 73 percent increase in domestic wheat costs. Argentina has seen wheat prices skyrocket 70 percent.

According to the World Bank, these price increases have been caused primarily by three factors: 1) Sharply higher demand for food in China, 2) U.S. drought conditions that hammered wheat production, and 3) unrest in Ukraine due to the near state of war with Russia.

Stock Up

U.S. food inflation running at 22%

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After five years of the federal government telling the public that despite a $3.5 trillion increase in monetary expansion, the inflation rate is below +2%, the Department of Agriculture (DOA) just warned the American public that the consumer price index for food is up by 10% this year.

The DOA tried to blame food inflation on the drought conditions in California, but last year's drought was worse and food prices fell by -6%. The real problem is Federal Reserve monetary stimulus is stimulating inflation. I reported in "Food Price Inflation Scares the Fed" two months ago that commodity food costs were exploding on the upside. Given the lag in commodity costs impacting prices on grocery store shelves, annual U.S. food inflation is now running at +22% and rising.

The DOA tried to blame food inflation on this year's drought conditions in California that they stated may have "large and lasting effects on U.S. fruit, vegetable, dairy and egg prices." It is true that California droughts are always agricultural issues, since 80% of the state's freshwater supply is used by farms and ranches. This has resulted in surface water deliveries to farms and ranches from reservoirs and the California Aqueduct being cut by 32.5%, or 6 million acre-feet.

Cult

Capitalism's ultimate goal: Bringing back the Dark Ages of feudalism

modern serf
© S. J. Carey
History never repeats itself, but from time to time, consciously or not, some influential men attempt to force us into the monstrosity of their imaginary time machines to try to reverse decades, and in the case of feudalism, almost a millenium of social progress. The mid-20th century brought the years of collective psychosis of Adolf Hitler's "thousand year Reich," and more recently what can be viewed as the United States of America's imperialist manifesto or so-called Project for the New American Century, concocted in 1997 but still in effect today under the current administration, with the self-proclaimed objective to "promote American global leadership" resolutely and by military force, if necessary.

Montesquieu and his colleagues of the mid-18th century, such as Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau of the Age of Enlightenment, denounced feudalism as being a system exclusively dominated by aristocrats who possess all financial, political and social power. During that time, which incubated the French Revolution and built its ideological foundations, feudalism became synonymous with the French monarchy. To the Enlightenment writers, feudalism symbolized everything that was wrong with a system based on birth privilege, inequality and brutal exploitation. In August 1789, shortly after the takeover of La Bastille on July 14, one of the first action of the Assemblee Constituante was to proclaim the official abolition of the "feudal regime."

Ironically, feudalism is making a comeback in the latest evolution and under the impulse of predatory global capitalism. After all, Karl Marx, in the mid-19th century, considered feudalism to be a precursor of capitalism. Typically a feudal system can be defined as a society with inherited social rank. In the Middle Ages, wealth came exclusively from agriculture: the aristocracy strictly assumed ownership of the land while the serfs provided the labor.

Comment: Feudal serfs traded their freedom for the "security" a lord could supposedly provide. History may not be repeating itself, but it is definitely rhyming. Only the props and costumes have changed.


Pistol

Out of control Seattle police file federal lawsuit over 'use of force' policy

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© Credit: Reuters/Jason Redmond

Police officers disperse a crowd celebrating on the street after the Seattle Seahawks won the NFL Super Bowl XLVIII in Seattle, Washington February 3, 2014.

Seattle police officers filed a federal lawsuit on Wednesday challenging new policies that restrict use of force, saying the rules endanger lives of both officers and civilians.

More than 120 officers have joined the lawsuit, which seeks a complete dismantling of a new use of force policy hammered out between the Seattle Police Department and the U.S. Department of Justice to stem an alleged pattern of excessive force.

The Seattle Police Department has been under federal monitoring since 2012, following an investigation into a series of incidents in which officers appeared to engage in excessive force, particularly against minorities.

Comment: The poor Seattle police are going to have some restrictions put on them for excessively beating minorities and others, so they're going to sue, saying it's unconstitutional and they have the right to beat people at will. It's about time they try to rein in cops gone wild!

US Police Brutality: Report - Seattle police show 'pattern of excessive force'