Free Mojtaba and Arash Day Feb 22

The Committee to Protect Bloggers was established to counter the increasing
number of bloggers who are being subjected to arrest and harrassment world-wide.
The Committee's first campaign is 'Free Mojtaba and Arash Day' to be held today. And it is getting a lot of publicity. "Overwhelming, between PRI's The World, BBC, Slashdot, BoingBoing, we have over twice as much traffic as usual, halfway through the day. People are planning to do the day by the score," said Curt. When asked if this campaign will work and if the Iranian government will listen and release both Mojtaba and Arash, he told me about Sina, a freed Iranian blogger, "Sina credited the attention of the blogosphere for making the Iranian authorities extremely uncomfortable and letting him go. We're hoping the same thing will happen here."

The Suicide Economy Of Corporate Globalisation

In 1998, the World Bank's structural adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto, and Syngenta. The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds which needed fertilizers and pesticides and could not be saved.

As seed saving is prevented by patents as well as by the engineering of seeds with non-renewable traits, seed has to be bought for every planting season by poor peasants. A free resource available on farms became a commodity which farmers were forced to buy every year. This increases poverty and leads to indebtedness.

As debts increase and become unpayable, farmers are compelled to sell kidneys or even commit suicide. More than 25,000 peasants in India have taken their lives since 1997 when the practice of seed saving was transformed under globalisation pressures and multinational seed corporations started to take control of the seed supply. Seed saving gives farmers life. Seed monopolies rob farmers of life.

Vananda Shiva

Suicide Seed: Bombshell in Bangkok

Farmers-Struggle-Against-GMO

While the servile canadian press was strangely silent on the event, the internet was certainly abuzz with Canada's turnabout at a UN meeting in Bangkok where they attempted to overturn an international moratorium on the universally condemned "suicide seed" technology which prevents 2nd generation seeds from regenerating. The original leak came from the canadian-based ETC Group. It was followed up with a report of a speech to the conference by Percy Schmauser, the Saskatchewan farmer who was sued by Monsanto for allegedly using "their" patented Canola seeds.
Monsanto versus Schmauser

The Canadian National Farmers Union, has initiated a
"Seed Saver Campaign" to prevent regulatory changes proposed by the federally-funded and corporate-dominated "Seed Sector Review Panel" preventing canadian farmers from saving and using seeds developed over decades, many in association with taxpayer funded agencies and universities. The NFU also issued a statement condemning the canadian delegation's Bangkok proposals.
There are at least 2 quickly-organized US letter-writing campaigns and a British one. here and here
After being swamped this week by protest emails and letters, the Canadian government was forced to soften its public position on terminator, but it continued to press a solidly pro-terminator view in the corridors and in a committee to negotiate a draft text on Terminator.

"The draft text on Terminator released thursday morning was appalling-it looked like it was written by the multinational seed industry", sid Jim Thomas of the ETC Group, speaking from Bangkok. "It strongly reflected the Canadian government's pro-terminator position as revealed earlier this week in the leaked document"

Thomas reported that the Canadian bid to overturn the moratorium on GM Terminator Technologies (GURTS) was backed only by the Governments of New Zealand and Australia in the UN meeting. The United States has never ratified the Treaty and was not part of the 174 nation deliberations. It has always been a strong proponent of "Terminator" technology.

The UN conference rejected the draft report proposal.

Paranoid shift

paranoid.101

Michael Hasty makes a good case for your justified
fears in this Online Journal article.

By Michael Hasty
Online Journal Contributing Writer

January 10, 2004—Just before his death, James Jesus Angleton, the legendary chief of counterintelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency, was a bitter man. He felt betrayed by the people he had worked for all his life. In the end, he had come to realize that they were never really interested in American ideals of "freedom" and "democracy." They really only wanted "absolute power."

Angleton told author Joseph Trento that the reason he had gotten the counterintelligence job in the first place was by agreeing not to submit "sixty of Allen Dulles' closest friends" to a polygraph test concerning their business deals with the Nazis. In his end-of-life despair, Angleton assumed that he would see all his old companions again "in hell."

The transformation of James Jesus Angleton from an enthusiastic, Ivy League cold warrior, to a bitter old man, is an extreme example of a phenomenon I call a "paranoid shift." I recognize the phenomenon, because something similar happened to me. .....more

Who was the "ordinary" Iraqui Woman at The SOTU Session

It seems the "ordinary Iraqui" woman pointed out by Dubya in his State of the Union speech, who held up a purple-stained finger, showing she voted, is a very important figure in the ruling elite and strongly linked to US hardline front organisations and possibly linked, like Chalabri, to the CIA.
Brings to mind the little girl whose tearful testimony about Saddam's troops throwing babies from incubators to the floor, turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador in Pere Bush's campaign to whip up support for his Iraqui campaign. It was later completely discredited.
This post was quick off the mark in pointing out the latest subtle deception.