Two scientists have now resigned from a group charged by the Food Standards Agency with having a “public dialogue” about genetically modified foods.
Last week Dr Helen Wallace, who is part of the think tank Gene Watch UK, resigned from the steering group for the project, and Professor Brian Wynne, who was the group’s Vice Chair, resigned yesterday.
Professor Wynne is an expert on public engagement with science, and said the dialogue programme, which was set up by the previous government, was in fact little more than propaganda for the companies responsible for developing GM food. He added that the Food Standards Agency, which is supposed to act as an independent watchdog that protects the public, had a “dogmatically entrenched” position in favour of GM.
Dr Wallace has similar concerns, arguing:
“It has now become clear to me that the process that the FSA has in mind is nothing more than a PR exercise on behalf of the GM industry. In my view, this would be a significant waste of £500,000 of taxpayers’ money. A process that was barely credible has become a farce.
“Taxpayers’ money should not be wasted on a PR exercise for the GM industry.”
Campaign groups have argued that the whole exercise, which is going to be outsourced to another organisation, will in fact just be used to gather information to allow better marketing and political propaganda efforts as part of an effort to make the public accept GM food.
The last government set up the project to explore the public’s views on the possible wider use of the technology. In the late 1990s GM foods were introduced throughout Britain, including in Scotland, with virtually no public consultation. This led to many massive campaigns, of which the SSP played a key part in several. Now, although GM crops are still grown in the UK, many supermarkets promise not to stock them because of the pressure.
GM protester pulls out crops
Socialists have argued for years that the drive to introduce the technology was coming from massive private companies with an interest in making more money from food, and agricultural products like pesticides and fertilisers. Chemical companies like Monsanto have worked hard to genetically alter organisms so that they will be able to cope with poisons intended for pests being sprayed on them. However, there are concerns that once new genes are introduced into the natural environment they have been shown to spread to other organisms and crops, with unforseen consequences for environmental and human health.
But perhaps most worryingly, these new technologies are not being developed by innocent scientists just interested in advancing knowledge. They are being designed and developed by for-profit corporations, whose sole interest is in making more money. So once a company has altered the genes of an organism, it can claim that this living thing is now their work, and patent it. This means that whenever someone uses that crop or animal in farming, they will have to pay the company for the privilege. In fact, many farmers have been forced to pay who weren’t growing genetically modified crops, after company scientists discovered that what was predicted had happened: their genetic modifications had cross pollinated, and you could find altered genes in non GM crops. Instead of seeing this as a concern, companies like Monsanto see it as a way to make more money, by making these unfortunate farmers pay.
The ultimate consequence of this would be the privatisation of our food supply, so that a few huge corporations would be able to control the seeds and technology necessary for the world to feed itself, and we would have to pay them ransom to survive. One of the most terrifying examples of the way these companies think was the attempt to develop “Terminator” seeds (their name!), which would produce crops that would not themselves go on to produce any seeds. If the companies were ever able to get this product widely used, then farmers would be unable to collect seeds from the previous years’ crops for replanting, meaning they would be completely dependent on seeds bought from the company that owned the patent on Terminator crops.
The resignation of these two scientists follows on from the complete discrediting of the previous government’s relationship with science, after it reclassified cannabis as a Class B drug despite the advice of its own scientists not to, and then rushed through a ban on mephedrone with no concern for real scientific evidence. It remains to be seen whether the ConDems will have a better relationship with the scientific community, but given their support for the mephedrone ban we won’t hold our breath. The Food Standards Agency says it will ask the new government before going ahead with the GM food consultation.
Eating this can not be a good idea
The fact of the matter is, the idea that we need GM crops to end world hunger is a myth peddled by people looking to make money for themselves. The world is more than capable of producing enough food to feed the human race through sustainable, ecological and organic agriculture. The problem isn’t the food we produce so much as the way its distributed. When so much of the land on Earth is dedicated to producing crops and meat for the rich countries, it’s hardly surprising those who live elsewhere go hungry.
A sign put up by people in Louisiana who face the destruction of their environment and livelihoods
As Leftfield previously reported, the US is currently undergoing one of its worst environmental disasters of all time. Last month, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico started an oil spill of gargantuan proportions. For weeks huge quantities of oil have been pouring into a pristine natural environment, devastating the species that live in it as well as the lives of the people living along the Gulf coast. Gulf fishermen are likely to be left without a livelihood.
As the full weight of this catastrophe sinks in, attention is increasingly turning to the role of the Obama administration in supporting BP, the company that operated Deepwater Horizon.
BP is the fourth largest company on Planet Earth. As of 2007 it had $292 billion in revenue. They use some of that money to directly influence the American political process. In 2008, the year of the last Presidential elections, the biggest recipient of BP’s cash was Barack Obama, who got $71,051 for his campaign.
In 2009 BP allocated $16 million for lobbying Congress. They allocated another $3.5 million for the first quarter of 2010.
The year following Obama’s election, the US Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service exempted the Deepwater Horizon from a detailed environmental assessment, concluding that the risk of a massive spill was unlikely. This followed intense lobbying by BP to have their rig exempted from the rules of environmental protection laws. In a letter to the White House, BP said the waiver would “avoid unnecessary paperwork and delays.” Those assessments that did take place claimed, in accordance with BP, that a spill like the one currently going on was impossible.
The massive spill seen from space: note the scale
Considering the billions to be gained in profits, BP must have considered the money they put towards getting Barack Obama elected money well spent.
In their application to drill, BP themselves admitted they weren’t going to put in place any further environmental protection measures than the bare minimum required by regulations.
Kierán Suckling, executive director of the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, said the federal waiver “put BP entirely in control” of the way it conducted its drilling.
“The agency’s oversight role has devolved to little more than rubber-stamping British Petroleum’s self-serving drilling plans,” Suckling said.
Freed from the possibility of proper inspection, it turns out that BP then went on to drill deeper than they had been licensed to. And a safety valve to turn off the oil in case of an explosion was not installed, because it was considered too expensive.
Since the disaster, Obama has struggled to look tough on the issue, claiming BP were completely responsible and will be made to pay. But this distracts from his own role, and the role of his government, in allowing this disaster to happen.
Since the US government declared Deepwater Horizon safe, 11 workers have gone missing, presumed dead. Oil gushes from the sea bed at the rate of 4000 barrels a day, and already covers an area larger than Puerto Rico. Efforts to cap the spill with a specially manufactured tower have so far failed, and the tower has had to be pulled out. Hundreds of people have already been made unemployed due to the devastation of fisheries, and as time goes on many more will lose their jobs. The damage to unique ecosystem of the Gulf will likely last centuries.
It seems unbelievable that BP or the Obama administration thought you could drill through 13,000 feet of rock below 5,000 feet of water without significant risk. But that’s the corrosive effect of capitalism: the people running BP, an entity with more power than most countries, cared more about the short term profits to be made than the centuries of damage they could do. The US government is corrupted and controlled by these powerful companies, and can’t be relied on to protect its own people.
Its beyond urgent that the global energy economy is taken out of these hands of these corporations. Putting energy in the hands of people, and meeting our needs on a not for profit basis is one of the most crucial issues facing the human race.
Updates: The Centre for Biological Diversity reports that even after the spill had begun, the Minerals Management Service has been offering waivers on detailed inspections, and continues to be nothing more than a rubber stamp for the drilling industry. So far, nothing has changed in the government’s pro-oil stance, which comes at the expense of living things that live near oil fields, including human beings.
In his latest column, Fidel Castro (the retired leader of the Cuban revolution) mentions the spill:
“Such developments as the recent environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico show how little the governments can do against those in control of capital. These are the ones who, both in the United States and in Europe, through the economy of our globalized planet decide the fate of the peoples.”
On February 25th a fatal car accident killed two well known gynecologists in Moscow. The crash was caused when their Citroen was smashed into by an armoured Mercedes that contained Anatoliy Barkov, Vice President of Lukoil, Russia’s largest oil company.
Very quickly the police attempted to cover up the accident in order to protect his reputation. They tried to lay the blame for the smash entirely on the two women, Olga Aleksandrina and Vera Sidelnikova, in the Citroen. But their version of events soon unravelled in the face of the facts.
The liberal opposition in Russia, who are so quick to protest the corruption of the government, were strangely silent on this issue. But a wave of indignation from ordinary people has been expressed on the internet, with big numbers of people supporting a demand to ‘Restore Justice,’ in the face of corporate executives who are above the law.
You can read more about this incident in this excellent article by Russian left-winger Boris Kagarlitsky. Also, below is the track ‘Mercedes S666′, distributed by Russian rapper Noize MC. This track gained massive popularity by talking about the incident. I haven’t been able to find a version with English subtitles in the video. However, the comments on youtube do have a translation-obviously it comes with a disclaimer that I’m in no position to check their accuracy, but I’ve copied them below the video.
“Let me introduce myself,
My name is Anatoly Barkov
I do not have any wings or any vampire eyeteeth.
In my position I do not need these stupid accessories
Let the hard rock musicians to have these silly, satanic things
You know, being a vice president of Lukoil is not only-only
I have to look solid without any rubbish
I do not look like evil at all
I am a person of a quite different level, a creature of a really high power
do not know problems, which could not be solved by corruption. I do not know of people, which lives are more important than my interests,
It does not touch me what the media will write about me.
If you are on the way for my Mercedes- does not matter- YOU will always have a blame in case of a traffic accident
Ref: MercedesS666, get out from my way, Plebeian, do not try to stay on it!
Silly Plebeian, shake! Patricians are on the road! Hurry! We are late on a way to a Hell…
In a Hell I will be boiled next to Evsukov (a policeman who shot and killed innocent people in a supermarket in Moscow in April 2009)
But now I am OK and wrapped up with everything
I am insured 100% from any troubles
By the way I am in touch with Vova (V.Putin)
I have an ability to change even TIME and SPACE
Suddenly all the video cameras are off
If they content some proofs of my crime
And just put meaning of people deep in your..
Ordinary people talking and talking, and so they will be quiet after all
Like a little dog yapping at an elephant
But he will always have a good reputation in any case.
I honestly admit that I do not really remember, Who are Vera Sidelnikova and Aleksadrina Olga
R: Mercedes S666, get out from my way, Plebeian, do not try to stay on it!
Silly Plebeian, shake! etc….. We are late on a way to a Hell, Keep away from our carriages!
Mercedes S666, get out from my way, Plebeian, do not try to stay on it!
Silly Plebeian, shake! Patricians are on the road!
Hurry! We are late on a way to a Hell,
Keep away from our carriages!”
A major investigation by Greenpeace has revealed what we always knew: climate change denial is a well funded conspiracy, centered on oil corporations.
In recent years, there’s been a lot of focus on the role of companies like Exxon in funding organisations that spread lies and propaganda to undermine climate science. But even their contributions are dwarfed by a little known US firm called Koch Industries.
The company is based in the US but has interests all over the globe. Despite being little known, it’s the second largest privately-held (that is, its shares aren’t traded on the stock market) company in the US.
The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch who own the company put $50 million into climate change denial between 1997 and 2008. Their interest is clear-they want to discredit any attempts to end the fossil fuel economy and limit carbon emissions. What they have done is a spectacular crime against the world, allowing huge amounts of lies to be disseminated that have seriously undermined efforts to tackle the biggest problem in human history.
Through a series of front groups, the Kochs have used their money to shift political debate away from action that needs to be taken. A few examples include:
-The American for Prosperity Foundation received $5,176,500 from the Kochs between 2005-8. This money was used to organise “grassroots” events across the US as part of the ‘Hot Air’ tour, which featured a hot air balloon. The aim was to build opposition to US legislators taking any action on climate change.
- The Cato Institute received $5,278,400 between 1997 and 2008, which it used to get climate change deniers on to panels and in the media to spread lies about what’s happening.
Scumbag liars
- The Kochs funded a Spanish study that tried to claim, falsely, that renewable energy had cost Spain jobs, which has been used by right wingers in several countries despite being shown to be nonsense.
- Koch funded groups have played a major role in hyping and repeating vastly exaggerated claims about the East Anglia Climate Research Unit hacked emails.
These guys are scum, capitalism at its worst: endangering the entire future of human civilisation for their own short term profit. Their (extremely well funded) politics has done so much damage to the world, and embodies all that is insane about our current economic and social model.
Make no mistake: organised climate change denial is a criminal conspiracy, perpetrated by the global rich to try and prevent social change. It needs to be challenged every time it rears its head.
Warning: This post contains some upsetting stuff about dead ducks.
The above video is one of several shot by William Todd Powell, a senior biologist working for the Province of Alberta in Canada. It shows a duck struggling to escape from a tailings pond, where oil company Syncrude dumped the toxic leftovers of its operation to extract oil from the Alberta tar sands.
Over 1,500 migrating ducks landed on the pond, covering themselves with the deadly residue. The vast majority of them died. Now Syncrude is facing a trial for its failure to protect the ducks, and the company could face up to $800, 000 in fines, and executives ultimately could get 6 months in prison.
Syncrude admit that they had failed to properly install noise-making equipment to scare the ducks away from landing on the toxic pond as they were migrating.
The disaster could have been covered up were it not for the courageous efforts of tipsters like Powell. Although legally obliged to do so, Syncrude had failed to inform authorities of what had happened. But when Powell and other wildlife officials got on the scene, their shocking images and video stormed around the internet, and forced action.
Footage of a Greenpeace action against the tar sands.
The whole affair has brought into sharp focus the environmental battle to stop exploitation of the tar sands. As the possibility of peak oil begins to bite, the fossil fuel industry is desperately looking for new areas to exploit to keep their profits flowing. The tar sands in Canada offer the prospect of huge new reserves, but they are very difficult to extract. This means huge amounts of energy are used in the process, causing massive carbon emissions. It also means enormous destruction of the natural environment, including much land that is home to Canada’s embattled indigenous people as well as pristine boreal forest. The fight to stop further exploitation of the oil sands is one of the most important battles against climate change and ecological destruction in North America, if not the world. Exploitation of the tar sands alone is enough to make Canada fail to meet its obligations under the Kyoto agreement on global warming.
Lawyers for Syncrude have entered a plea of not guilty to the trial, claiming there was nothing they could have done to prevent the disaster. Shamefully, they have attacked William Todd Powell, and, supported by the corporate media in Canada, accused him of “showboating”. Syncrude argues that Powell should have “shot the ducks with a gun not a camera” as that would have been more humane. Leaving aside the complete heartless hypocrisy of the statement, this ignores the fact that actually Alberta wildlife authorities did shoot the ducks that were in range to put them out of their misery. However, the pond is so vast and the number of ducks so huge, it was only possible for them to reach a fraction of them.
Ed Stelmach: Twat in a hat
The Conservative Premier of Alberta, Ed Stelmach, is unfortunately in the pocket of Syncrude and the other oil companies. His government has given approval to a massive expansion of tar sands operations, as well as spending millions on trying to improve the image of the dirty oil project. Responding to the disaster, he bizarrely chose to call the horrific duck deaths an “opportunity” to show the world Alberta “means business” when it comes to environmental protection. Quite how footage of dead and dying ducks does this is unclear.
In an even more ridiculous gaffe, Stelmach also told reporters recently he had not seen the notorious duck images, even though they had been headline news on TV and in the papers in Alberta. His comments outraged many, as they felt they showed a total lack of concern for his own responsibility in the disaster. In response, opposition politicians gave him photos in the legislature, and Greenpeace delivered blown-up and gift wrapped photos in person.
“Not even looking at the front page of papers in this province? That’s something that is not responsible for a premier to do. They are taking Syncrude to court, but are they actually examining their own actions?” said Mike Hudema of Greenpeace.
Greenpeace activists deliver gift-wrapped photos of the dying ducks to Ed Stelmach
Stelmach and his spokespeople have offered various different stories to try and get out of looking stupid over his claims. Stelmach now claims he thought reporters were asking if he’d seen the photos before they were introduced in court, which they clearly weren’t. His team have also claimed that they give him news clippings each morning with the pictures cut out. “He doesn’t have the luxury of opening a paper in the morning,” said his communications director, Cam Hantiuk. “He missed the visuals.”
The fact is that the disastrous tar sands development is being driven by the corporate greed of Syncrude and others, and whatever the results of the trial they will continue to have huge control over the political process in Canada as elsewhere. The heroic work of William Todd Powell in exposing them shows the world a model of a responsible public servant. Unfortunately, Canadian governments see work like his as less of a priority than defending dirty developments, as wildlife services across the country face budget cutbacks and lay-offs.
The horrific duck deaths just underline the need for grassroots activism that works on the ground to undermine the power of the oil lobby and their paid-for politicians.
Young people are lazy, illiterate, untidy, useless and have an ‘attitude problem’, one of the most highly-paid people in the country revealed yesterday to a conference of supermarket executives. Lucy Neville-Rolf, who earned £1.6 million last year in her job as an executive director of Tesco, blames the ‘education system’ for its failings to create a perfect society of conformist minimum wage robot clones, in a speech which rolled out just about every clichéd anti-youth prejudice in the book. I mean, it is about time these pesky young folk were brought into line and started showing some fucking gratitude for their shitty minimum wage temp contracts, isn’t it?
Well, Lucy agrees, adding into her anti-youth tirade that ‘a society where people don’t feel the need to work to gain material possessions will not be a stable or successful society.’ Well, Leftfield disagrees. The reality is that Lucy Neville-Rolf, Terry Leahy and all the other Tesco executives are an unnecessary bunch of parasites who scrounge off the hard work of tens of thousands of low-waged workers in supermarkets in the UK, in banana plantations inthe Caribbean, and all over the world. Obviously, Lucy, Terry and co. are deeply concerned with the continuation of a society that places an obsession with ‘material possessions’ above all else, as they’ve managed to get bloody well jolly rich off the back of it. Indeed, Tesco’s turnover continues to grow, with profits now topping £3 billion annually, and that’s even with a workforce that’re apparently all lazy, barely employable teenage slackers!
Undoubtedly, Neville-Rolf hinted in her speech at serious issues in our education system, in her claims that school-leavers “Cannot do reading. They cannot do arithmetic. They cannot do writing.”. There are tens of thousands of young people every year slipping through the system and leaving school lacking basic numeracy and literacy skills -- but the only reason this concerns Tesco is that it’s affecting their profit margins, not because they actually give a shit about the state of education in this country. If they really do care that much, maybe they could consider not going to such extreme lengths to avoid paying their taxes here…?
Tesco already employees 40,000 people under the age of 19, and seemingly want to see the whole school-system re-oriented to be a rolling production line of cheap labour to suit their own interests. In all their moaning about the state of education, something they’ve done in the past too, they seem to miss the point that education is important for education’s sake. This sentiment the education system purely acts to ready people for a live of wage slavery is pretty worrying at a time when schools and colleges are facing massive budget cuts from central government.
Lucy Neville-Rolf says that young people seem to think that the ‘world owes them a living’. Why the hell shouldn’t it? Everyone has the right to a job with decent pay and conditions, and just because the bosses at Tesco would rather we lived in a corporate paradise of low-taxes and the conditions of cheap labour (ie. mass unemployment), doesn’t mean it’s suddenly acceptable to start shitting all over young people. After all, do you think Lucy Neville-Rolf would go into her work smiling, happy and looking forward to a fun day of shelf-stacking if she was on £5.86 an hour? I doubt it.
Just a quick update to the issue we previously reported about the abuse of women detainees in Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre.
Meg Hillier, liar and knobhead
The women have now been on hunger strike for three weeks,
demanding their freedom and better conditions in Yarl’s Wood. However, Meg Hillier, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for ‘Identity’ apparently, has written to MP’s with a bunch of straight up lies about the situation in the centre. Never mind, I’m sure she knows what she’s talking about,
the government people working on Identity clearly aren’t clueless.
She writes that women aren’t really on hunger strike, and they are getting food brought in by visitors. In fact this is banned by the guards. 34 women have written from the centre to deny Hillier’s claims. She also argues that the way immigration cases are examined is fair, that women didn’t face serious health consequences as a result of recent events, and that no racist abuse took place. This is all contradicted by the women who are actually there.
Here’s the letter that they’ve written to let people know they’re still on hunger strike:
“We the undersigned have been on hunger strike since the 5/02/10 to date.. At no particular point in time have we gone to eat in the dining room, got food from the vending machines or at the shop. We would also like to point out that Yarl’s Wood has a no food, no drink policy, this has always been the case therefore saying that “visitors bring us food” is untrue.“
Scandalously, Hillier also claims that those on the outside campaigning to help the women are spreading lies that “cause unnecessary distress” to the women in Yarl’s Wood. In fact everyone helping to publicise what goes on in this private prison, run by a textbook creepy company, SERCO, are helping the detainees in their own small way. Publicity and public pressure on the government helps keep these women safe from further abuse. The Black Women’s Rape Action Project are in daily contact with them, and they ask for all of us to tell the world what’s going on to try and prevent the situation getting any worse.
They’ve also asked for supporters to email the government demanding freedom for detainees and an investigation into conditions in Yarl’s Wood. You can email:
· Alan Johnson MP, Home Secretary johnsona@parliament.uk or public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
· Meg Hillier MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State Home Office meghilliermp@parliament.uk or apc.secretariat@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
You can also find your local MP and email them via WriteToThem.com. I’m not generally a fan of writing to MP’s, you could do it all day on different important issues and it’s often quite a passive way of protesting. But in this case I think it might actually do some good to make the government feel under pressure, so why not take five minutes to support women in Yarl’s Wood.
“HM Inspector of Prisons urgently carries out an independent investigation into reports of violence, mistreatment and racist abuse from guards, being kettled for over five hours in a hallway, denied access to toilets and water and locked out in the freezing cold, which women have made, and a moratorium on all removals and deportations of the women who took part in the hunger strike pending the results of that investigation”.
While it’s a bit far away for any SSY members who aren’t living in exile down south to make, there’s an important protest in London tomorrow against the brutal treatment of women detained in Yarl’s Wood Imigration Removal Centre.
Since February 5th over 50 women in the centre had been on hunger strike in protest against their detention and conditions. On Tuesday guards went in to break the protest up violently. Many were “kettled”, that is trapped by guards, in a small airless corridor for 8 hours with no access to food, water or toilet facilities. Others were trapped outside in snow for hours without warm clothes or shoes. Emergency services were denied access to the centre, and the women have been unable to access medical treatment.
But most shocking have been the reports of abuse by the guards. There has been widespread verbal racial abuse, as well as brutal physical assaults that left one woman unable to stand and another with a finger nearly severed.
Cristel Amiss, of Black Women’s Rape Action Project, told The Guardian: “Over 70% of women in Yarl’s Wood are rape survivors, many are sick and vulnerable. Why are they being punished for raising serious injustices?”
Yarl’s Wood, which is just outside Clapham in Bedfordshire, is a privately run facility controlled by a genuine British 21st Century evil megacorporation, Serco Group. As well as running detention centres and private prisons, they operate electronic tagging services, airports on behalf of the occupation in Iraq, provide fleet support to the navy and run an unprecedented private contract for the maintenance of the UK’s Anti Ballistic Missile System at RAF Fylingdales. They’ve been called the biggest company you’ve never heard of, because behind the scenes they are slowly taking over a whole raft of things the state used to do.
Yarl’s Wood holds 405 women and children in detention, usually awaiting deportation back to countries which they have fled for their lives. Since it opened in 2001 it has been a site of constant protests and hunger strikes. Between 2002 and 2003 it was closed for over a year following a fire.
Today (Thursday 11th) activists in support of the women are taking part in a running protest at their treatment, culminating in a previously planned mass demo tomorrow outside Serco’s offices in London, which are at:
18-22 Hand Court (off High Holborn), London, WC1V 6JF.
Two scientists have now resigned from a group charged by the Food Standards Agency with having a “public dialogue” about genetically modified foods.
It seems unbelievable that BP or the Obama administration thought you could drill through 13,000 feet of rock below 5,000 feet of water without significant risk. But that’s the corrosive effect of capitalism: the people running BP, an entity with more power than most countries, cared more about the short term profits to be made than the centuries of damage they could do. The US government is corrupted and controlled by these powerful companies, and can’t be relied on to protect its own people.
On February 25th a fatal car accident killed two well known gynecologists in Moscow. The crash was caused when their Citroen was smashed into by an armoured Mercedes that contained Anatoliy Barkov, Vice President of 
A
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