Archive for April, 2008

The Beginning of the Genetically Modified Person

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

Health freedom is being bashed around the head and shoulders in Minnesota. And at the Federal level as well.

Do you the right to control who knows what about you? Who owns your DNA? Who owns your child’s DNA? Minnesota has answered the question: the State owns your most intimate data and there is not much people can do about it unless they control their legislators and turn the intrusive system on its head.
MinnesotaMinn Stat 144.651 has been described as “a wrongful taking” under the 5th Amend and is probably illegal without a warrant based on probable cause-is this the type of Government YOU trust?
This is no small matter: what comes next is “preemptive’ strikes against all sorts of things: diseases, “criminality”, obesity, who knows what!

Government stakes claim to every newborn’s DNA
‘We now are considered guinea pigs, instead of human beings with rights’
April 03, 2008

By Bob Unruh
(c) 2008 WorldNetDaily
An Orwellian plan that has state and federal governments staking claim to the ownership of every newborn’s DNA in perpetuity is advancing under the radar of most privacy rights activists, but would turn the United States’ citizenry into a huge pool of subjects for involuntary scientific experimentation, according to one organization alarmed over the issue.
“We now are considered guinea pigs, as opposed to human beings with rights,” Twila Brase, president of the the Citizens’ Council on Health Care, a Minnesota-based organization familiar with the progress in that state.
She warned ultimately, such DNA databases could spark the next wave of demands for eugenics, the concept of improving the human race through the control of various inherited traits. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, advocated for eugenics to cull those she considered unfit from the population.
In 1921, she said eugenics is “the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems,” and she later lamented “the ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all.”
Lawmakers in Minnesota recently endorsed a proposal that would exempt stockpiles of DNA information already being collected from every newborn there from any sort of consent requirements, meaning researchers could utilize the DNA of more than 780,000 Minnesota children for any sort of research project whatsover, Brase said.
“The Senate just voted to strip citizens of parental rights, privacy rights, patient rights and DNA property rights. They voted to make every citizen a research subject of the state government, starting at birth,” she said. “They voted to let the government create genetic profiles of every citizen without their consent.”
The result will be that every newborn’s DNA will be collected at birth, “warehoused in a state genomic biobank, and given away to genetic researchers without parent consent – or in adulthood, without the individual’s consent. Already, the health department reports that 42, 210 children have been subjected to genetic research without their consent,” Brase told WND.
She said although her organization works with Minnesota issues, similar laws or rules and regulations already are in use pretty much all across the nation.
The National Conference of State Legislatures, in fact, lists for all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia the various statutes or regulatory provisions under which newborns’ DNA is being collected.
Such programs are offered as “screening” requirements to detect treatable illnesses. They vary as to exactly what tests are done but the Health Resources and Services Administration has requested a report that would “include a recommendation for a uniform panel of conditions.”
Further, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., is on record proposing a plan that would turn the program into a consolidated nationwide effort.
“Fortunately,” he said at the time, “some newborn screening occurs in every state but fewer than half of the states, including Connecticut, actually tests for all disorders that are detectable. … This legislation will provide resources for states to expand their newborn screening programs…”
His plan specifically would provide millions of dollars for educating and training health care professionals in “relevant technologies,” and set up standards for updating tests and maintaining the quality of test results.
So what’s the big deal about looking into DNA to hunt for various disease possibilities?
Nothing, said Brase, if that’s where the hunt would end.
However, she said, “researchers already are looking for genes related to violence, crime and different behaviors.”
“This isn’t just about diabetes, asthma and cancer,” she said. “It’s also about behavioral issues.”
“In England they decided they should have doctors looking for problem children, and have those children reported, and their DNA taken in case they would become criminals,” she said.
In fact, published reports in the United Kingdom note that senior police forensics experts believe genetic samples should be studied because it may be possible to identify potential criminals as young as age five.
“If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large,” Gary Pugh, director of forensics at Scotland Yard, was quoted saying. “You could argue the younger the better. Criminologists say some people will grow out of crime; others won’t. We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society.”
The United Kingdom database already has 4.5 million genetic samples and reportedly is the largest in Europe, but activists want to expand it. Pugh said that it is not possible right now to demand everyone provide a DNA sample, but only because of the costs and logistics.
One published report cited the Institute for Public Policy Research, which is suggesting children from 5-12 in the United Kingdom be targeted with cognitive behavioral therapy and Pugh has suggested adding the children in primary schools, even if they have not offended, to the database.
There, Chris Davis of the National Primary Headteachers’ Association warned the move could be seen “as a step towards a police state.”
But Pugh said the UK’s annual cost of $26 billion from violent crime makes it well worth the effort.
Brase said such efforts to study traits and gene factors and classify people would be just the beginning. What could happen through subsequent programs to address such conditions, she wondered.
“Not all research is great,” she said. “There is research that is highly objectionable into the genetic propensities of an individual. Not all research should be hailed as wonderful initiatives.”
It can identify some tendencies for potential problems, and that is one of its downfalls, she said.
“It lends itself to be the beginning of discrimination and prejudice,” she said. “People can look at data about you and make assessments ultimately of who you are.”
Further, the invasion of privacy is huge. DNA is the most intimate identifier that exists, she said.
“This, however, says our DNA is not ours but the government’s,” she said. “It says our values, our ethics, belief systems have to be [subjected] to the interests of the government.”
Right now various states obtain DNA under different plans, and keep the information for varying time periods. In Minnesota, the legislature is working on legal authorization for the state government to take it without consent, keep it forever, and use it for whatever purposes the state desires – all without obtaining consent or even letting people know.
A mandatory sample of a newborn’s DNA also pulls back the veil on information about the parents as well, Brase told WND.
“It’s like they’re collecting information on the whole family,” she said.
The Heartland Regional Genetics and Newborn Screening is one of the organizations that advocates for more screening and research.
It proclaims in its vision statement a desire to see newborns screened for 200 conditions. It also forecasts “every student … with an individual program for education based on confidential interpretation of their family medical history, their brain imaging, their genetic predictors of best learning methods…”
Further, every individual should share information about “personal and family health histories” as well as “gene tests for recessive conditions and drug metabolism” with the “other parent of their future children.”
Still further, it seeks “ecogenetic research that could improve health, lessen disability, and lower costs for sickness.”
“They want to test every child for 200 conditions, take the child’s history and a brain image, and genetics, and come up with a plan for that child,” Brase said. “They want to learn their weaknesses and defects.
“Nobody including and especially the government should be allowed to create such extensive profiles,” she said.
The next step is obvious: The government, with information about potential health weaknesses, could say to couples, “We don’t want your expensive children,” she said.
“I think people have forgotten about eugenics, the fact of the matter is that the eugenicists have not gone away. Newborn genetic testing is the entry into the 21st Century version of eugenics,” she said.
“This is in every state, but nobody is talking about it. Parents have no idea this is happening,” she said.
\The Natural Solutions Foundation, the leading Global Health Freedom organization, is proud to present this information to you. We protect your right to know about – and to use – natural ways to maintain and regain your health, no matter where in the world you live. Among your freedoms is the right to clean, unadulterated food free of genetic manipulation, pesticides, heavy metals or other contaminants and access to herbs, supplements, frequency devices and other means as therapies that may benefit or to protect your well-being without drugs and other dangerous interventions, if you choose.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=60643

For more information on our global programs, including the International Decade of Nutrition, and our US based ones, please visit us at www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org and join the free email list for the Health Freedom eAlerts to keep you in the loop, informed and active defending your right to make your own decisions about your health and wellbeing!
Our activities are supported 100% by your tax deductible donations. Please give generously (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189) to the Natural Solutions Foundation. Thank you for your support.
Feel free to disseminate this information as widely as possible with full attribution.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.organics4U.org

NSF on the Road: Days 3-6, April 19-22 , 2008

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

Songhai, Porto Novo, Benin

Day 3, April 19, 2008
We landed today in Cotonou, the capital of Benin and the shoving began: African airports are like airports everywhere, but worse. Everyone apparently needs to be first, whether there is any point to being first or not.

I don’t need to be first and neither do General Stubblebine or Tyson, so we were pretty close to last – last off the airplane, last through customs, last to get a baggage cart, last to get our luggage.

Tyson, however, was nearly the first of our party to get vaccinated! I am strongly averse to vaccination and, to my mind, the more you study any one particular vaccine, the more you NEVER want to take that preparation. That is certainly the case with Yellow Fever Vaccine. Although many countries in Africa require proof of vaccination against this devastating disease (unnecessary, really, for people who have access to good health, Vitamin C and silver solutions) for entry. Bert, Tyson and I were able to produce exemption letters for our visas and secured our visas for Benin without any difficulty.

I had forgotten that, once you clear passport control and get your entry stamp in Benin, there are two guys in (what once were) white coats asking to see your Yellow Fever Vaccination card with a valid stamp on it. We speak English. They speak French. The possibility of communication was nill to none. Gen. Stubblebine and I tried the words for “Exemption letter” in as many ways as we could think of. We failed miserably. Finally, ready to go home, I suppose, since we were close to the last people on the plane, the two vaccine police men gave up in exasperation and waved their hands, shouting, “Go! Go!” and waving us through the door.

Tyson, however, was separated from us and was not so lucky. Before he knew what had happened, he was sitting in the Health Officer’s Office being asked in French for something (he does not speak French). He, too, kept saying that he had an exemption letter (from me, in fact!) but there seemed to be no uptake on that. He looked up from getting out the letter from his papers and saw that the Health Officer was bending over a refrigerator from which he took a vial and a syringe. “No! NO!” Tyson said and waved his letter of exemption around (probably a little wildly – I know that is the way I would have waved mine!). The man got out a yellow International Vaccination Card, stamped it and said, in perfect English, “Give me 10 Euros [ Approximately $16 US].

Tyson gave him the Euros and the man waved him out of the office WITH a vaccination card but WITHOUT the vaccination!

Once we got through the pushing and shoving at the luggage conveyor, we exited past a Beninese guard who checked every single one of our luggage tags to make sure they matched the numbers on our luggage. With all the people ahead of us, can you imagine how long that took?

Finally we exited the baggage area only to realize that the customs people were opening every suit case of every traveler. I stopped dead and looked around in utter dismay: It was already 9:45 PM and we were clearly going to be here for hours. For some reason (I have no idea what it might have been), the customs official nearest to me looked up, saw me and said, again, “Go! Go!” and we made our way out into the crowd waiting to greet their friends and relatives, associates and colleagues. There was a gentleman in a brilliant and distinctive African suit waving a very welcome “Songhai” sign. We clustered around him and he led us to the van he had brought to pick us up from Songhai.

Because our plane had not come in the night before, his two hour round trip to the airport (and the fuel which is so important in this very poor country) was wasted. He was, however, gracious and helpful nonetheless.

When we got to Songhai Center about an hour later, we were greeted in this oasis of plenty and prosperity in the middle of want and hardship by Father Godfrey Nzamjou, the man whose inspiration lives and breaths in Songhai. Although the restaurant closes at 10, he and his staff had kept it open for us (how different from Paris!) and we had an hour or so to converse and orient ourselves.

We were led to a modern building with suites and bedroom, each with a shower and private bath.

The next day, we toured the compound in the morning and saw the ingenuity, love and tenderness, yes, tenderness with which this land has been turned from a desert into a Garden, perhaps a Garden of Eden. Today, in a world where food riots are becoming more commonplace daily, the fertility which has been coaxed from the land is an urgent lesson for possibilities and a call to action. The Panama Santa Clara Project will follow the Songhai model for farming without waste or pollution. Imagine what we can do with land that is so abundantly fertile!

The heat was truly ferocious and about 11:00AM we retired indoors because anywhere outside was impossibly hot. We had more excellent food, all grown here, and waited for Fr. Godfrey to come back to us for more discussion.

Around 4 PM he arrived and said, “OK. Now you know what we have at Songhai. What are you looking for?” We spoke at depth and at length and videotaped the discussion. I think it is important that you see that and will mount it as soon as we have enough bandwidth to make that possible. It was a wonderful conversation in which we expounded on our dream and Fr. Godfrey said that this was what he had been waiting for.

We agreed that we must support each other’s work and he reaffirmed that he will, without a doubt, come to Panama to set up the design for the zero emissions farm complete with bio-digester and bio-gas for fuel independence as well as power independence. Fr. Godfrey is the proud “papa” of the largest bio-gas facility in Africa. Cheap, easy and clean, bio-gas can heat our water, run our generators, pump our liquids, grind our grains, etc. And we will learn from a master!

But Songhai is much more than just a fuel independent system. Please take a moment when the tape is mounted to watch it and capture the shared dream of this world leader whose Center is a recognized United National Center Excellence in Africa.

After more chat and dinner (outstanding, of course), Tyson, General Bert and I set to working through the immense number of details for our community in Panama, the Santa Clara ARC, with the clear understanding that what we are doing now is highly preliminary since the community will ultimately make these decisions for itself.

That took us late into the night and we fell asleep quite exhausted. Oh, by the way, there was still no internet connection.

Day 4, April 20, 2008

Today was our “BIG DAY” at Songhai Center. Father Godfrey is immensely busy and he agreed to give us most of a full day to discuss our plans and possible working together in considerable detail – that is a large part of why we came.

We began with breakfast at 8 AM in the restaurant which serves about 200 meals per day to visitors. All food served here is grown here or on other Songhai Centers so everything is not only fresh, but free of pesticides and all other types of synthetic, chemical additives. It is wonderful knowing that every bite was grown by the labor of people who love the land and understand how to nurture it so it can nurture them. We are very eager to replicate that loving relationship between our food and our selves as we come to create the farm and farm school which will be a core activity of the Santa Clara ARC.

We took a tour of the facility including the foundry, the kiln, the fields, the food processing areas, the store, the animal sheds, the fish pond, the composing area, the bio gas facility, etc., etc. All of this amazing integrated farming has been created here in the total absence of fertile soil. Fr. Godfrey told us that he had worked 15 years of the 20 that he has been here to create this astonishing fertility. We start in Panama with astonishingly fertile land!

Songhai’s rich productivity daily feeds 1500 people (300 workers and their families, which average 5 people), about 100 students who are in training, typically for 18 months, and the 200 guests who come to the African and Western restaurants. I think it is an easy leap to conclude that our fertile farm will be producing much more than we members of the community, guests and health center clients can consume so it is reasonable to expect that one center of profit for the Santa Clara ARC will be the distribution and sale of outstanding food!

Because of the intense heat, everything stops for several hours during the middle of the day. Everything, that is, except lunch. We wove our way from shade spot to shade spot to the restaurant for lunch and much talk about what we have seen. Tyson is a black smith/iron worker so he was particularly fascinated by learning what he needs to know to make the bio gas apparatus and by the machines which Songhai designs and makes on site.

Later, Fr. Godfrey came to where we are staying, where there is, mercifully, air conditioning and we started to talk together. I asked him how many other groups like ours had come to set up sister facilities as we are doing.

Tyson had the foresight to set up a video camera to film this discussion and it was a great decision. The video is not compatible with my computer so we have to download it to a disc and upload it that way. Clearly we do not have the opportunity here in Songhai, but we will do so shortly.

The upshot of the discussion was that we are what Fr. Godfrey has been waiting for as a partner community! We will bring our experience in order to work toward sister health centers in Parakou, Benin and Santa Clara, Panama. He will use his experience to make Santa Clara a full zero emissions facility farming center and school.

Meanwhile, we had missed our appointment with Col. Mikode, the Codex Contact Point for Benin because we arrived more than a full day late. This delay winds up having significant impact on Codex. Read on.

Dinner, then more intense discussion and off to bed.

Day 5, April 21, 2008
Today we started the day with meeting for about an hour during breakfast with Fr. Godfrey. By the way, Songhai makes its own delicious yogurt. After about an hour, he had other things to do before heading off to Nigeria to meet with government officials there to replicate the Songhai model there. There are also two people from separate projects doing similar things in Nigeria. One is, like Gen. Stubblebine, a General.

Sometime later, Col. Mikode and Pascal, the head of the Benin Horticultural Research Station came to see us. They had good news and bad news for us.

The good news was that they had prepared a budget and program for the agricultural project using magnets to treat the water used to grow plants. Preliminary results suggest significant increases in crop yield, nutrient density, plant vigor and significant decreases in water utilization. Given the rapidly worsening shortage of food in the word due to climate change and diversion of food crop acreage to biofuels (which cost at least 29% more energy than they produce so the bargain is a very, very bad one for the planet, its carbon balance and its people) the ability to increase yield and nutritional value, while eliminating all requirements for pesticides and other chemicals, is a very important asset. Equally important, perhaps, is the reduction in water usage to get stronger and more vigorous plants.

I had been perplexed by the fact that nothing was happening with the agricultural magnet project – nothing. I had designed a simple (and, I hope, elegant) design which would test the hypotheses of increased crop yield, increased nutrient density, increased plant vigor and decreased water usage but they require actually being carried out to show anything. I could not understand it when I got an email saying that the project was postponed until they got the money to carry it out.

When Pascal presented me with the document outlining the costs, I nearly fell off my chair. Instead of 6 test beds, there were 33. Instead of raised beds edged with scrap lumber of corrugated tin or sand bags, they were asking for 4.2 metric tons of concrete, thousands of bricks, etc.

It was clear that we needed to talk!

The next interesting meeting was a telephonic one with Dr. Koura, who was supposed to serve as the Beninese delegate to the Codex Committee On Food Labeling next week in Ottawa. She had informed the Codex Contact Point, Col. Mikode, that she would not be funded by the WHO Trust Fund at 11 PM on Saturday evening but that email was not read until 9 AM Monday morning (yesterday). That means that Benin will not have a voice at this important Codex meeting where the initiative begun by the African nations at the meeting in Ghana in February this year to demand labeling of Genetically Modified Organisms was pushed forward so impressively.

I asked our Natural Solutions Foundation Trustees if we should not host (i.e., pay for) the Beninese delegate to make sure that there was a strong voice from this country at the Codex meeting. We quickly agreed and the next thing we needed to do was convince Dr. Kora and the Beninese government that this was a good idea.

Col. Mikode had no problem with it and said that if Dr. Koura was willing, so was he.

Day 6, April 22, 2008

Early this morning Tyson, General Stubblebine and I set off with a translator to visit Pascal at the Horticultural Research Station to find out what had gone wrong with the Agricultural Magnet project and retrieve 20 pairs for use here at Songhai.

Because we had a translator with us this time, as opposed to the last time we talked with Pascal, we discovered what the problem was: Language difficulties led to Pascal believeing that since we had identified 11 potential crops for the experiment, he would need to conduct the experiment with 3 beds of each crop. The undertaking would be huge and he wanted to build structures to make it possible. I explained that we wanted to choose 2 crops from the 11 and Pascal heaved a huge sigh of relief. We walked out to the fields to see where the projects would take place and Pascal has already applied the magnets to a buried rigid water pipe in preparation for our visit. Once we got the miscommunication out of the way, it became clear that a real project using amaranth and tomatoes would be carried out and carried out well.

We are eager to get those results and the results from the Songhai application. It is our hope that the results are robust enough that we can begin to change agricultural practices in many places in the world. It is essential, the Natural Solutions Foundation believes, to reclaim food production, eliminating pesticides and other dangerous chemicals, and making ti clear that the best crop yield is produced by natural means, not by GM crops. Dr. Koura, on the other hand, when we finally did get together this afternoon, was not so sure it was a good idea. She had “turned off” the process by telling her bosses that she was not, after all, going and was adamantly reluctant to tell them that she could now go under our sponsorship.

We tried every which-a-way to Sunday to persuade her, but she was not movable. We got ready to write to the US and UN Ambassadors from Benin to see if they could provide a person to attend the meetings (it is much easier to get a Canadian visa from the US) when we got a piece of very bad news, indeed.

This information makes us think that we are seeing a pattern: The Ugandan Codex delegate had taken the ball into his own hands and arranged an African strategy session on GM labeling the day before the CCFL meeting was to begin. He is a credentialed delegate from a member nation. Canada denied him a visa twice.

The strategy of the power brokers is clear: fix it so the opposition cannot show up and then claim that the process is legitimate. That is pretty much the same as arresting the opposition and claiming that your election was democratic (or counting the votes on a programmable electronic voting machine with a predetermined outcome, for that matter!)The Codex process is far from legitimate. Our Trustees have just spent an extended period on the phone working out our next strategic moves to deal with this new tactic.

More to follow.

Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.Organics4U.org

GM Files: Japan Bans US Long Grain Rice Imports Due to GM Contamination

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

Japan ends U.S. long-grain rice imports
Aug 21 2006
Source: Associated Press

TOKYO Japan has suspended imports of U.S. long-grain rice following a positive test for trace amounts of a genetically modified strain not approved for human consumption, a news report said Sunday.

Japan’s Health Ministry imposed the suspension on Saturday after being informed by U.S. federal officials that trace amounts of the unapproved strain had been discovered in commercially available long-grain rice, the Asahi newspaper said.

The genetically engineered rice was detected by Bayer CropScience AG. The German company then notified U.S. officials. The strain is not approved for sale in the United States, but two other strains of rice with the same genetically engineered protein are.

Health Ministry officials were unavailable for comment Sunday.

NSF on the Road: Days 1-2 April 17-18, 2008

Saturday, April 19th, 2008

Paris
Yesterday General Stubblebine, Tyson Phillips and I embarked at Newark International Airport for Cotonou. Yesterday we went to the Beninese Permanent Mission to the United Nations in order to get our visas for Benin. We met, seemingly by accident, the Ambassador to the United Nations and two Counselor Ministers. Since people do not flock to Benin for tourism, there was considerable interest in what made 3 people want to go there in a day or so needing express visa services.
The Beninese Ambassador to the United Nations came by and introduced himself. We told him that we were from the Natural Solutions Foundation and that, through our International Decade of Nutrition (www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org)we had two agricultural projects in Benin using magnets to treat water and increase crop yield and nutrient density. He was greatly interested in the fact that we were helping Benin, and through it, Africa and the rest of the developing world, feed itself in a time of food shortage caused by a combination of drought, mistaken policies to transition food growing fields to bio fuels (which take more energy to produce and transport than they yield through combustion) and general climate change problems. We explained that the last time we were in Benin (March, 2008, following a Codex meeting on labeling Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in Ghana we had met not only with the Minister of Agriculture and the head of the Water Utilization Board (both highly enthusiastic about the project – magnets reduce water utilization significantly), the head of the National Agricultural Research and Education Station, the head of the Food Safety and Security Program and Father Godfrey of Songhai.
Of course, the Ambassador knew each and every one of them and was especially interested in the fact that Fr. Godfrey has agreed to be our mentor for our Panama Beyond-Organic Farm and Farm School and the community we are building around it (the Santa Clara demonstration project, www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org. (If you are interested in learning more about the Santa Clara Project, check it out at the URL above.)

He told us that he knew all of the people we mentioned very well and was very, very warm about Fr. Godfrey and his magnificent work at Songhai Center which you can see on our YouTube Channel if you scroll down to the Songhai Center Videos (www.YouTube.com/naturalsolutions).

As you might expect, the Ambassador is a busy man who was, before our conversation, rushing out in his overcoat to a meeting.

We waited a bit and our visas walked in, held by the Consul. He, too, asked what took us to Benin. We told him that we were going to visit Fr. Godfrey to work on our Panama/Benin collaboration(Fr. Godfrey will act as our Zero emission consultant based on his world-changing work in Benin and we will create a natural medicine center for him at one of his Songhai Centers in Benin). The Consul was ecstatic! Fr. Godfrey was his mentor, he was trained there at the Songhai Center, he owns a piece of land which he will farm using Fr. Godfrey’s zero emission techniques and he would like to help us in any way he can!

Then his associate walked in, another Consular Minister, according to his card, and asked why we were going to Benin. Same conversation. He, too, was thrilled and asked how he could help. There is no shortage of enthusiasm for what Fr. Godfrey has accomplished: a beyond-organic fertility of outstanding magnitude in previously barren land with no pollution and the possibility of feeding Africa and the rest of the world.

(Yes, there is a population problem – the best way to reduce population, as experience has shown over and over again, is to educate women: community life improves and population goes down without brutality or suppression.)

So, after an hour and a half or so of intense conversation and enthusiasm, we said “Goodby” with a promise to come back after our trip and brief the staff of the Permanent Mission of Benin to the United Nations!

A day or so later we got on the plane at Newark for Paris and then a transfer to Benin. The flight from Neward to Paris on Air France in Economy was one of the most uncomfortable flights we have ever endured! When we reached Paris, we fully expected to wait 4 hours and get on a plane to Cotonou, Benin. Well, at least that was the theory. Songhai staff were to pick us up in Benin. Our plane was delayed 4 hours. We sent them an email. Our plane was delayed another 3 hours. We sent them another email. Our plane took off. We looked out the window and jet fuel was streaming out of the tank under the wings. We were producing a chemical trail, not a chemtrail!

The Captain announced that we had an engine problem and we were off loading fuel to reduce our weight so that we could land — at Paris!

We turned around and the flight, we were told, was canceled. We were sent to a hotel (Well, we arrived there at 11:10 – 10 minutes after the restaurant closed – the Desk Clerk said, when I asked him what we were supposed to do for food, “Madam, that is a problem without a solution. Our restaurant closed 10 minutes ago!”.) There was precious little accommodation made for us but I went outside and asked another restaurant staff person what we could do and he said, “Madam, there is no problem! The Novotel across the street has a nice restaurant open until 1 AM! So at least we had a nice meal after the difficult day spent waiting in Charles de Gaulle Airport.

This morning we are back in the airport (our plane, scheduled for the same time as yesterday, 1:20 PM) is not yet on the board and we are due to board in 30 minutes….)

Do we reach Cotonou today (of course, our meetings were canceled – we hope!) or not? Stay tuned!

After Cotonou we head for the Codex Committee on Food Labeling where the African nations which justifiably fear and distrust GMOs will try to push the US back another step and retain their right to keep unlabeled GM food out of their countries and, perhaps, keep all GMO out! We will certainly provide strategic guidance for them if they need it.

By the way, your tax deductible donations are most welcome and urgently needed. Please consider becoming a sustaining monthly supporter by making a recurring donation (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189) now! Our work only continues if you join us as supporters and communicators. Let everyone on your list know that they can sign up for the Natural Solutions Foundation’s Health Freedom eAlerts (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=187) and ask them to do so. There are big health freedom doings afoot and we need every voice!

Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.Organics4U.org

GM FILES: South African Corn Taints the Continent

Friday, April 18th, 2008

The Natural Solutions Foundation, the leading Global Health Freedom organization, is proud to present this information to you. We protect your right to know about – and to use – natural ways to maintain and regain your health, no matter where in the world you live. Among your freedoms is the right to clean, unadulterated food free of genetic manipulation, pesticides, heavy metals or other contaminants and access to herbs, supplements, frequency devices and other means as therapies that may benefit or to protect your well-being without drugs and other dangerous interventions, if you choose.

For more information on our global programs, including the International Decade of Nutrition, and our US based ones, please visit us at www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org and join the free email list for the Health Freedom eAlerts to keep you in the loop, informed and active defending your right to make your own decisions about your health and wellbeing!
Our activities are supported 100% by your tax deductible donations. Please give generously (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189) to the Natural Solutions Foundation. Thank you for your support.
Feel free to disseminate this information as widely as possible with full attribution.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
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South Africa exports non-GM maize while the GM crap is dumped on the unsuspecting population and contained in more than 135,000 food products.

http://www.liberationafrique.org/spip.php?article2126

First GMO seed scandal in Africa: South Africa contaminates the continent

29 February 2008
African Centre for Biosafety – http://www.biosafetyafrica.net/

Seed maize from South Africa, claiming to be pure, has been found to be contaminated with genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The South African branch of US seed giant Pioneer Hi-Bred recently exported contaminated maize seeds to unsuspecting Kenyan farmers.

The maize seeds are contaminated with a genetically engineered variety-MON810- belonging to Monsanto that has not been approved in Kenya. GM maize MON 810 contains a novel gene that is considered unsafe and banned in several European countries.

The contamination of Kenyan seeds comes on the eve of a UN meeting that is tasked with developing internationally liability rules for genetically engineered products.

The contamination was detected by Greenpeace International, who, in cooperation with a coalition of several environmental and farmers’ organisations in Kenya, commissioned tests of 19 different seed varieties that were bought in seed stores from key maize producing areas across the country. The tests, conducted by an independent European laboratory, revealed that Pioneer’s seed maize PHB 30V53, sold in the Eldoret region of Kenya, is contaminated with MON 810 maize, a variant that is genetically engineered to be insect resistant.

“We call on all African national regulatory agencies to ban any import of seeds from companies that do not guarantee clean seeds that are free from genetic contamination,” insists Mariam Mayet director of African Centre for Biosafety (ACB), “Kenya now needs a strong biosafety bill that puts farmers’ and consumer rights first, and we need mandatory international rules that ensure that polluters must pay for genetic contamination.”

Some blame for this seed contamination scandal must also lie at the door of the South African government who has allowed the export of unapproved maize in the first place, she contends. “Maize is the most important staple crop in Kenya. Farmers and consumers in all countries, rich and poor, have the right to untainted, safe seeds and food.”

Note:

From 12-19 March, in Cartagena, Colombia, governments will continue to negotiate international rules on liability for damages caused by GMOs. These negotiations take place under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. Some developed countries such as the United States, Japan and New Zealand are opposing a global agreement on GMO liability. The continuing threats to developing country agriculture posed by GMO contamination, as evidenced by this latest contamination scandal, demonstrate the need for legally binding, global rules that ensure that polluters pay if anything goes wrong with genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

In February 2008 the French government decided to ban the cultivation of Monsanto’s maize MON 810. The French ban is based on several environmental concerns, such as the impossibility to prevent the dissemination of GM maize into the environment and the possibility of toxic effects on non target organisms, such as earthworms. Besides France five other EU member states (Austria, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Poland) have banned the commercial growing of GM maize MON 810 on the basis of environmental and health concerns .