I’m assuming most of you folks aren’t surprised that a room full of executives from Big Oil fabricated the National Energy Policy that the present occupant of the White House foisted on the U.S. public late this past Spring. After all, Dick Cheney, who headed the taskforce, and George W. (the man allegedly in charge) are all about fossil fuels.
As Director of Harken Energy Corp. and son of oilman, former CIA Director, and Former U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush, George Junior has made a tidy profit over the years in the oil business, even with failed, but somehow profitable ventures and questions of SEC insider trading violations! In fact, the Bush family’s government connections and their oil business profits place them on what might be termed the shaky Dome of a Teapot, pretty near the boiling point.
Vice-President Dick Cheney’s tenure as CEO of big-time oil equipment supplier, Haliburton, Inc. (the 5th largest military contractor in the U.S.) puts the Veep squarely in bed with Big Oil. Cheney scored a $34 Million dollar retirement package from Halliburton, a company that does business with some, if not all, of the worst dictatorial regimes on the planet. Halliburton’s list of customers reads like an Amnesty International roster of chronic human rights violators, not to mention destroyers of the biosphere and all-around enemies of the Earth. Interestingly, Halliburton contracted with Iraq to rebuild its oil infrastructure after Bush Senior’s Gulf War destroyed it, but NGO’s that don’t earn a dime in commerce can’t even send Chlorox to Iraqi hospitals!
So, you tell me, does Big Oil have a seat at the table in the White House? Seat? They’ve got nearly the whole table! It looks like everyone else is in the kitchen eating with the help!
Now, the Government Accounting Office wants to see the guest list for Cheney’s little tea party on energy policy. But the VEEP and his lawyers are digging in their feet. Representatives Henry Waxman of California and John Dingell of Michigan are also concerned about undue influence from Bush campaign contributors like Enron Corporation’s CEO, Kenneth Lay and energy industry promoters like the Edison Institute. It’s a pretty safe bet that reduced energy consumption, solar panels, and wind turbines were not items up for much, if any, discussion with those players at the table. It’s said that not one environmentalist was in attendance.
I’m not sure how much more blatant a conflict of interest can get. While government watchdogs and media lapdogs search for a smoking gun, the rest of us can see pretty clearly through the thinly veiled smoke screen. Big Oil, (of course, in company with Big Auto, the nuke-boosters, and Old King Coal) is dug-in at the head of the table of present U.S. energy policy. It will be more than interesting to see if their little tea party is crashed by any number of disgruntled outsiders. However, like all such affairs, at some point the party’s over.
Oxybusters (Information on the gas additive MTBE)
National Oil Refinery Action Network
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“2001-8-0″,”Global Grassroots & Regulatory Response”,”53,2001,Animal Rights & Environment,Issue Number,Aug 2001,Organic Consumers Association,Year”,”42″,”
Despite the ongoing global offensive by the Gene Giants, anti-GE and
pro-organic forces continue to gain strength on all fronts, including public
opinion, marketplace dynamics, and legislation.
- In North America, biotech proponents were dismayed by a 6/20/01 ABC News
poll which, among other trends, found that 62% of American women now believe
that genetically engineered foods are “unsafe.” The ABC News poll, as well
as recent polls in Canada, shows that North Americans are slowly but surely
catching up to their counterparts in Europe and Asia-where 70-80% of
consumers remain firmly opposed to “Frankenfoods.” As ABC News put it,
“Barely more than a third of the public believes that genetically modified
foods are safe to eat.” Another poll (6/26/01) conducted by the Pew
Charitable Trust, underlines the fundamental problem that the gene engineers
face: the more that Americans hear about genetically engineered foods, the
more concerned they become. More than half of Pew respondents (55%) reported
they had heard a ‘great deal’ or ‘some’ about genetically modified foods
sold in grocery stores, up from 44% just six months earlier, and many lack
confidence in the government’s ability to manage gene-altered foods,
following last fall’s recall of products contaminated with Starlink corn.
The poll also found that consumers are paying more attention to media
coverage of the potential hazards of GE foods as opposed to their supposed
benefits. In other words the more Americans hear about genetically
engineered foods, the less they like them, despite a $50 million dollar a
year propaganda campaign launched by the biotech industry two years ago.
restrictions in foreign markets, according to a new report by the General
Accounting Office, the research arm of the US Congress. In the wake of
losing several billion dollars in GE-tainted corn, soy, and canola exports,
US and Canada agro-exporters can expect even more losses as European, Asian,
and other governments adopt the “precautionary principle” requiring
pre-market safety testing, labeling, and segregation of genetically
engineered crops.
Since biotech crops came on the market in 1996, US farm exports have fallen
from $60 billion a year to $51 billion-a decline of 15%. The US has lost
$400 million a year in corn exports to the EU, while Canada has lost a
similar amount in canola exports. Bernard Marantelli, a spokesperson for
Monsanto UK, admitted April 18 that GE canola acreage in Canada this year
“went down… a significant amount.”
A similar pattern is emerging in soybeans, with US GE soya essentially being
boycotted by major companies in Europe, Japan, Korea, and other nations.
Over the past year, major EU food corporations and fast food chains have
also begun to remove all GE corn and soya from their animal feed. Already
25% of all EU animal feed is now GE-free. Meanwhile exports of GE-free
grains from Brazil, Australia, India, and China are expanding. Sources in
the EU feed industry say the present demand for certified non-GMO soybean
meal has grown from nearly zero to 25% in only 12 months, with the
expectation of further increases in the coming year. (AgJournal UK 5/30/01)
in May and June after finding traces of Monsanto’s genetically engineered
NewLeaf potatoes in the products. Facing global opposition to their GE
spuds, Monsanto announced earlier this year that they were pulling NewLeaf
potatoes off the market.
soybeans would not be available for planting in Canada in 2001. Canada has
begun to supply increasing amounts of non-GE soybeans to Japan. (GAIN Report
#CA1075 Canada Oilseeds and Products 5/18/01) Four other GE crops have also
been removed from the Canadian market this year, GM flax – “Triffid”; GM
canola – “Quest”; GM potato – “NatureMark”/”NewLeaf”; and GM
corn-“StarLink.”
www.gmfoodnews.com/
buying group, Korea Corn Processing Industrial Association (KOCOPIA), is
requesting international trading houses to stop supplying the nation with US
corn. The move follows last week’s discovery by local authorities of
StarLink corn contamination in cornstarch production, a KOCOPIA official
told BridgeNews.
increasingly isolated in international negotiations such as the Biosafety
Protocol and the Codex Alimentarius of the World Trade Organization–facing
increasing pressure from both the global North and South for precautionary
measures regarding GMOs. Thirty-five nations, representing a billion people,
are now involved in the process of setting mandatory labeling requirements
for genetically engineered foods. In mid-July the Codex is expected to tell
the US that its “no pre-market safety testing” and “substantial equivalence”
doctrines on GMOs are not acceptable. (Financial Times 7/2/01) For a report
on present and pending GMO legislation across the world see
www.purefood.org/gefood/updatethirdworld.cfm
challenging industry leaders gathered for the annual Biotechnology Industry
Organization (BIO) convention. The street protests, preceded by three days
of “BioDevastation” teach-ins and workshops, generated extensive media
coverage across North America, along with a near hysterical response from
the Biotech Establishment. www.biodev.org
In a press release dated 6/22/01, the agribusiness and biotech front group,
American Council on Science and Health, stated:
“Caveat Emptor. Consumers and journalists beware. Biodevastation activists
aim to target you over the next few days with false and misleading
information about food safety, nutrition and the environment. The same
people who brought you a long list of other false health and environmental
scares-including the infamous Alar in apples scare, the Dow-Corning breast
implant campaign-and dozens of other debunked fears are at it again. This
time the scaremongers are targeting such safe foods as milk and other dairy
products in your local supermarket and at food retail outlets such as
Starbucks.”
unfurled a giant 1500 square-foot banner in front of the Convention Hall,
which read “Biotech Perverts–Get Out of Our Genes”. “There are thousands of
biotech industry representatives coming to town, who are perverting
agriculture, science, nature and democracy as we know it. These perversions
impact human health and the well-being of all life.” stated Shannon Service,
a Biodevastation protest leader.
against Starbucks, calling on the company to ban GE food and beverage
ingredients and to brew Fair Trade, shade-grown coffee on a weekly basis.
Ocean Beach residents are trying to stop a Starbucks café from locating in
their neighborhood, pointing out that Starbucks has now become the “Wal-Mart
of American coffee shops,” routinely moving into neighborhoods and putting
local independent coffee shops out of business.
calling on the major seafood companies to take up arms against attempts to
develop genetically modified salmon. If not, seafood consumption may
decline, he says. “It is my opinion that the US consumer would embrace
genetically engineered salmon about as enthusiastically as they would allow
a nuclear power plant to be erected in their back yard. If anything, the
American public is looking to find out more about the products that they
assume to be wholesome, safe and environmentally sound and more and more are
leaning to ‘natural’ or certified organic to be sure of what they are
receiving.” Richard C. Martin Jr. (Quoted in IntraFish, a fish industry
publication, 5/22/01). In the US, the Center for Food Safety and the
Genetically Engineered Food Alert have launched a legal petition to keep GE
Frankenfish off the market. See www.foodsafetynow.org
front of international farm leaders at the World Agricultural Forum in St.
Louis. “A steadily shrinking number of companies are gaining unprecedented
control over all aspects of commercial food, farming and health,” said Rural
Advancement Foundation International research director Hope Shand. Shand
pointed out that Monsanto seeds account for 94% of the total area planted in
commercial genetically engineered crops, worldwide. Rounding out Shand’s
list of “gene giants” are DuPont Co., Syngenta Crop Protection Inc., Aventis
CropScience and Dow AgroSciences LLC. Shand said aggressive moves by the big
Agbiotech firms for greater control of their GM seed creations must be
combated if world hunger and poverty problems are to be addressed.
including India, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Mexico, and Peru
have denounced the US for “dumping” GE soya and corn in food aid shipments
and grain exports. Biotech industry spokespersons have responded that
denunciations of GMOs in food aid shipments are proof that anti-GE
campaigners such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are willing to let
the hungry masses in the Third World starve.
But as noted author and hunger expert Frances Moore Lappe pointed out in the
Los Angeles Times (7/1/01): “Government institutions are becoming ever more
beholden to… corporations [rather] than to their citizens. Nowhere is this
more obvious than in decisions regarding biotechnology–whether it’s the
approval or patenting of biotech seeds and foods without public input or the
rejection of mandatory labeling of biotech foods despite broad public demand
for it. Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but by a scarcity of
democracy. Thus it can never be solved by new technologies, even if they
were to be proved ‘safe.’ It can only be solved as citizens build
democracies in which government is accountable to them, not private
corporate entities.”
suburb of Minneapolis on 6/25/01, in solidarity with the Biodevastation
protests in San Diego. Police were forced to break down the doors and arrest
the protesters. On 5/14 a group of 50 Southeast RAGE (Resistance Against
Genetic Engineering) activists in Greensboro, NC were harassed (and three
arrested) by police as they staged a symbolic “ crop decontamination”
exercise outside the Agbiotech company Syngenta’s offices in North Carolina.
Fifty biohazard “technicians” quarantined a cardboard “garden” of
genetically altered mutant corn, which was then removed by a giant puppet,
Father Earth.
Colorado, next November which will give voters a chance to vote on whether
genetically engineered foods should be served in area schools, given that
these foods have not been proven to be safe. After a heated debate in the
media over several weeks, the Denver Post published an editorial June 1
calling for mandatory labeling of all genetically engineered foods.
www.non-gmosource.com
The success of the Denver effort in raising the
level of debate over Frankenfoods in Colorado has inspired the Organic
Consumers Association and a number of Green Party activists to discuss
joining efforts with local activists (and national networks such as the
Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods) to get city council
resolutions and initiatives on the ballot all across the US. State ballot
initiatives on GE foods are also underway in Washington, Oregon, and other
states.
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Thanks for posting. Good to see that not everyone is using RSS feeds to build their blogs 😉