This short film captures in a unique way the wounded and fragmented nature of our consensus reality; exaggerated biology, constricting thought bands, the symbolization of impulse and craving, all depicted in the drab confines of what could be an old age asylum. An interesting work.
Some Southern California cities fine residents for watering their lawns too much during droughts.
But in Orange, officials are locked in a legal battle with a couple accused of violating city ordinances for removing their lawn in an attempt to save water.
The dispute began two years ago, when Quan and Angelina Ha tore out the grass in their frontyard. In drought-plagued Southern California, the couple said, the lush grass had been soaking up tens of thousands of gallons of water -- and hundreds of dollars -- each year.
They said they were trying to do something good for the environment.
"We've got a newborn, so we worry about her future," said Quan Ha, an information technology manager for Kelley Blue Book.
But city officials told the Has they were violating several city laws that require residents to cover significant portions of their frontyards with live ground cover. On Tuesday, the couple is scheduled to appear in Orange County Superior Court to challenge the city's lawsuit against them.
"It's their yard, it's not overgrown with weeds, it's not an eyesore," said Cleek, whose own yard boasts fruit trees. "We should be able to have our yards look the way we want them to."
City codes require that 40% of the yard be landscaped predominantly with live plants.
"Compliance, that's all we've ever wanted," said Senior Assistant City Atty. Wayne Winthers.
Last summer, the couple tried to appease the city by building a fence around the yard and planting drought-tolerant greenery -- lavender, rosemary, horsetail and pittosporum, among others.
They sent a photo of the yard to city officials in October. But according to the city, their landscaping still did not comply with city standards.
"They put up a nice fence, but [the photo] didn't show anything about how they had complied with code, as far as the frontyard goes," Winthers said, "nor did it include a site plan."
At the end of January, the Has received a letter saying they had been charged with a misdemeanor violation and must appear in court.
"It's just funny that we pay our taxes to the city and the city is now prosecuting us with our own money," Quan Ha said. "Doesn't it waste funds to go back and forth in court, rather than sending pictures, e-mails and having phone conversations?"
Meanwhile, the couple said they had reduced their water usage from 299,221 gallons in 2007 to 58,348 gallons in 2009.
Voters in Iceland on Saturday resoundingly rejected a US$5.3 billion plan to pay off Britain and the Netherlands for debts spawned by the collapse of an Icelandic Internet bank, initial results showed.
Results returned from about 74,150 ballots counted so far in a country of about 320,000 showed that 93 percent of voters said “no” in the referendum, compared to just 1.6 percent who said “yes.”
The referendum results are indicative of how angry many Icelanders are as the tiny island nation struggles to recover from a deep recession.
The global financial crisis wreaked political and economic havoc on Iceland, as its banks collapsed within the space of a week in October 2008 and its currency, the krona, plummeted.
The Icelandic government was the first to fall as a result of the meltdown.
Icelanders were deciding whether to approve the payment of US$3.5 billion to Britain and US$1.8 billion to the Netherlands as compensation for funds that those governments paid to about 340,000 of their citizens who had accounts with the collapsed bank Icesave.
The Icelandic Internet bank had offered high interest rates before it failed along with its parent, Landsbanki.
“This result is no surprise,” Icelandic Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir said. “Now we must turn to the task of finishing the negotiations on Icesave.”
The debt owed to Britain and the Netherlands is a small sum compared with the massive amounts spent to rescue other victims of the global meltdown — US$182.5 billion was paid out to keep US insurance giant American International Group alive — but many taxpayers in the country say they can’t afford to pay it.
The deal would require each person to pay about US$135 a month for eight years — the equivalent of a quarter of an average four-member family’s salary.
"While ballistic missiles move at speeds of about 4,000 miles [6,500 km] per hour, they are no match for a superheated, high-energy laser beam racing towards it at 670 million mph.”
The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency was no less enthusiastic about the results, stating “The revolutionary use of directed energy is very attractive for missile defence, with the potential to attack multiple targets at the speed of light, at a range of hundreds of kilometres….” - The Intelligence Daily
"The collision involved an Iridium commercial satellite, which was launched in 1997, and a Russian satellite launched in 1993 and believed to be nonfunctioning. The Russian satellite was out of control, Matney said."
A statement from Iridium read:
"While this is an extremely unusual, very low-probability event, the
Iridium constellation is uniquely designed to withstand such an event,
and the company is taking the necessary steps to replace the lost
satellite with one of its in-orbit spare satellites,"
If the functional status of the Russian satellite is itself unknown, or 'believed to be' something or other, how can it than be determined that the satellite was 'out of control'? In later reports Russian officials confirm that the satellite was indeed 'defunct', going off-line only two years after launch. However, everything orbiting near earth is tracked and satellites (that can still be communicated with) are moved into a retirement orbit (radioactive space junk depot) or brought back into the earths atmosphere at or around their 'best before date'. Therefore I find it hard to envision that a known defunct (non-communicable) satellite, that apparently had no orbital adjustment capabilities, which had moved into an orbit shared by an American based satellite (that had maneuver capabilities) and that was being used by U.S. government officials, didn't elicit a warning regarding an impending collision. The following is from the BBC:
Mr Johnson said that at the beginning of this year about 17,000 manmade pieces of debris were orbiting Earth.
The items, some as small as 10cm (four inches), are tracked by the US Space Surveillance Network - sending information to help spacecraft operators avoid the debris.
Of the 6,000 satellites sent into orbit since 1957, about 3,000 remain in operation, according to Nasa.
Europe has just initiated its own space surveillance programme. One of its main weather satellites had a near miss in December with a Chinese object. The Europeans knew nothing about the threat until the Americans contacted the European Space Agency to inform it of the danger. - BBC
Based on NASA's own investigation the shuttle Columbia failed due to a heat breach caused by a faulty shielding panel that fell away. The nature of the fault might not have been from a heat shield malfunction however, but from a focused laser beam directed from a ground station in New Mexico.
"Over the past five years, various NMB-related technologies have been tested. While world attention has been diverted to far less successful BMD programs involving the Patriot Advanced capability-3 (Pac-3 and the Israeli Arrow 2) missile system, the more promising technologies have been kept under wraps and given a low profile.
Successfully tested technologies include Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL), a joint project between the U.S. and Israel. Successful THEL tests were conducted from New Mexico's White Sands missile range in 2000/2001, where it shot down Katyusha rockets and incoming artillery projectiles.
The THEL system uses a high-energy, deuterium fluoride chemical invisible beam. The laser produces and amplifies light of a particular wavelength, or color, which is then directed at a target with great accuracy.
In a typical engagement scenario, when a missile is launched, upon detection by the THEL fire control, the radar establishes trajectory information about the incoming missile, then passes the target to the pointer-tracker subsystem (PTS), which includes the beam director. The PTS tracks the target optically, then begins a "fine tracking" process for THEL's beam director, which targets THEL's high-energy laser. The energy of the laser heats the target, which causes it to explode.
If the laser is powerful enough, it can generate very high temperatures where the light falls, melting or vaporizing the target.
A study completed in 2001 concluded that the missile interceptor has "lots of promise" and further development should be pursued, primarily in enabling system's air transportability, including the type of transport aircraft it should fit on (C-130, C-17 or C-5).
In early 2002, military scientists were trying to develop the laser with a greater range, that can follow and hit fast-moving objects at distances ranging from tens of kilometers.
At the same time last year, the US Air Force and Missile Defense Agency were poised to begin flying the first Airborne Laser (ABL) test aircraft. Loitering at altitudes around 40,000 feet, the ABL system is designed to destroy boosting ballistic missiles with a multi-megawatt laser beam that travels at light speed over great distances. Its high-energy beam (about the diameter of a basketball) will heat a missile's side until it fails structurally, then tumbles to earth. - Weekly Universe"
And so we have the widespread deployment of PAC-3's, and the unveiling of the once secret star wars program. In essence we are in the midst of yet another arms race, where technological superiority such that definite victory is assured will remain ever elusive. The U.S. strategy - overwhelm through sheer force. Deploy PAC-3's with ever greater range, and support them with air based, land based, and satellite based laser weapons. The U.S. knows full well they will lose a portion of their capability during an exchange, the goal is to have more hardware than the adversary. The continuation of this race will end badly for everyone, we are currently on the road to ruin without some drastic international agreement to halt all space based weapons, including restrictions on the deployment of a new generation of ballistic missiles.
But wait, the Alex Jonesians, and the even more far right, will scream bloody 'world government' at the tune of this solution, as they will at every other international agreement that sets limits or restrictions on the individual right to insanity.
The real question in all this is, why do we choose such a seriously mangled dream as an experience? We need to contemplate that question, the seed of our solution lies in that type of question.
The provocative decisions by the U.S. on missile deployments in Poland, Romania and Bulgaria since the expiration of the START last December lead to no other conclusion than the White House and the Pentagon intend the indefinite postponement if not the aborting of any comprehensive agreement to limit and reduce nuclear arms.
Russia’s permanent representative to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, has recently voiced the concern that the U.S. still plans to base anti-ballistic missile facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic [16] in spite of statements by President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates last September 17 that previous plans for both countries are being replaced by “stronger, smarter, and swifter” deployments.
The U.S. has not substituted the missile encirclement of Russia with that of China. It is conducting both simultaneously.
As it is doing so, the Pentagon announced on February 12, 2010 that “A U.S. high-powered airborne laser weapon shot down a ballistic missile in the first successful test of a futuristic directed energy weapon, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said….” [17]
A Reuters report of the test launched from a base in California over the Pacific Ocean, one which has been touted as finally realizing the Ronald Reagan administration’s plans for the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars, described its purpose: “The airborne laser weapon is aimed at…providing the U.S. military with the ability to engage all classes of ballistic missiles at the speed of light while they are in the boost phase of flight.” [18]
One of weapon’s manufacturers, the Boeing Company, issued a press release for the occasion which said in part: “This experiment marks the first time a laser weapon has engaged and destroyed an in-flight ballistic missile, and the first time that any system has accomplished it in the missile’s boost phase of flight….The laser is the most powerful ever installed on an aircraft….” [19]
Northrop Grumman, another partner in the project (Lockheed Martin being the third), added: “While ballistic missiles like the one ALTB [Airborne Laser Testbed] destroyed move at speeds of about 4,000 miles [6,500 km] per hour, they are no match for a superheated, high-energy laser beam racing towards it at 670 million mph [one billion kph].” [20]
The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency was no less enthusiastic about the results, stating “The revolutionary use of directed energy is very attractive for missile defence, with the potential to attack multiple targets at the speed of light, at a range of hundreds of kilometres….” [21]
The airborne laser weapon is mounted on a modified Boeing 747 commercial airliner. Its potential range is global.
Ten days later it was reported by the U.S. Army that the High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico will receive a new laser weapon and “The Army may soon blast missiles out of the sky with a laser beam.” The weapon contains “100-kilowatt lasers that can rapidly heat a target, causing catastrophic events such as warhead explosions or airframe failures.”
Pentagon officials said it has “successfully worked in the laboratory and on the battlefield and now they want to begin shooting down missiles with it.” [22]
Airborne laser anti-missile weapons will join the full spectrum of land, sea, air and space interceptor missile components to envelope the world with a system to neutralize other nations’ deterrence capacities and prepare the way for conventional and nuclear first strikes.
The Canadian federal government announced in its budget that paper Canadian currency will become plastic and have new security features next year. Its $2 and $1 coins will also receive new changes.
Ottawa, Canada - On Thursday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s minority Conservative government announced in its budget that its paper currency will go plastic by late next year, according to the Globe and Mail. The plastic notes will also contain high security features to ensure that the $10 and $20 bills last longer.
The Bank of Canada will replace the nation’s cotton-paper bank notes with a tough polymer that are meant to last two to three times longer. The money will be waterproof as well, so if you wash your money in the laundry then it won’t be a big deal, reports The Canadian Press. However, the Bank of Canada has not revealed the details on the specific technology.
This latest measure is designed to avoid counterfeiting, which the Royal Canadian Mounted Police say there were more than 141,000 counterfeited bills found worth $3.3 million in 2007, reports the United Press International.
Australia was the first nation to use plastic money and a spokesperson for the Bank of Canada, Julie Girard, believes it’s a very good investment on the part of the federal government.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty also announced that the nation’s $2 and $1 coins will be replaced with steel instead of the predominantly nickel-based.
As far as the investing milieu goes, on the domestic scene here in Canada, Eric Sprott is one of the few who has a good sense of where things are headed. Canada is pretty sterile in that there are very few investors that think outside the conventional encampment. Sprott stands out for his position and articulates it well.
Sprott Asset Management said Wednesday that it has raised $400-million (U.S.) from its initial public offering (IPO) of its Sprott Physical Gold Trust at $10 (U.S.) per unit. See final prospectus.
This figure is reminiscent of Claymore Gold Bullion Trust, which raised more than $400-million (Canadian) last May and has recently converted into an exchanged-traded fund (ETF). It now trades as Claymore Gold Bullion ETF (CGL-T10.20-0.01-0.10%).
Last Friday, Sprott Physical Gold Trust (PHY.U-T10.050.060.60%) and
Sprott Physical Gold Trust (PHYS-N10.020.020.20%)began trading, respectively, on the Toronto Stock Exchange and NYSE Arca.
The appeal of the Sprott offering is a low management expense ratio (MER) of 0.45 per cent (compared to 0.65 per cent in the preliminary prospectus), while the gold is stored at the Royal Canadian Mint and unitholders can redeem units for the physical gold, said Peter Loach, executive vice-president of product development at Sprott.
The fee for the Sprott gold bullion fund, he said, is attractive when compared with a 3.31-per- cent MER charged by Toronto-based Bullion Management Group Inc. for its BMG BullionFund, a mutual fund that invests equally in gold, silver and platinum bullion.
" Announcing his success at a 2001 press conference, the president of Epicyte, Mitch Hein, pointing to his GMO corn plants, announced, “We have a hothouse filled with corn plants that make anti-sperm antibodies."
...they had taken antibodies from women with a rare condition known as immune infertility, isolated the genes that regulated the manufacture of those infertility antibodies, and, using genetic engineering techniques, had inserted the genes into ordinary corn seeds used to produce corn plants. In this manner, they produced a concealed contraceptive embedded in corn meant for human consumption." - William Engdahl
These are complex times, built upon complex systems. The population of the planet is being severely strained now, crop failures and the loss of arable land due to soil salinity, drought, decimated water tables, floods, soil erosion, super weeds, desertification and nutrient depletion only compounds the intensifying shortage of fertilizer availability as price accessibility declines across the planet. The move to sterilize populations is an ill advised attempt to manage the energy and food depletion scenario now playing itself out, the bitter fruit of a Malthusian action plan that has been devised upon an energy scarcity reality model.
Humanity is being led by a conspiracy of belief down a road of utter dependence and helplessness, where the connection between society and food becomes one of sheer desperation. This growing desperation is the elephant in the room, the cancer in the body, and the wholly unnatural development that degrades the status of the human being and deadens the human experience. Our dependence on external forces which are outside the scope of our understanding is based entirely on a mystical and magical belief that someone is taking care of us, that someone is guarding the gates, protecting us from that which we deny about the world.
Strategic local food networks will play a vital role in the world of tomorrow; those who build those networks now, and those who started building yesterday, are going to be the leaders of a hungry world. One thing needs to be very clear however, the Monsanto's and Bayer's of the world must be stopped, they must be overturned, their technology quarantined and relegated to 'secure bio-labs' until we can sort out the science in an objective, non profit oriented way.
The population reduction plan will continue under the guise of philanthropy and nation building, and the agenda of food control will continue as strategic interests consolidate the food chain, carrying out all the while a planned genetic contamination of the worlds staple crops. These things will continue unless and until we do something about it. Hiding on a farm in the middle of Gods land will not protect us from the encroachment, it will only delay the inevitable.
One long-standing project of the US Government has been to perfect a genetically-modified variety of corn, the diet staple in Mexico and many other Latin American countries. The corn has been field tested in tests financed by the US Department of Agriculture along with a small California bio-tech company named Epicyte. Announcing his success at a 2001 press conference, the president of Epicyte, Mitch Hein, pointing to his GMO corn plants, announced, “We have a hothouse filled with corn plants that make anti-sperm antibodies.”
Hein explained that they had taken antibodies from women with a rare condition known as immune infertility, isolated the genes that regulated the manufacture of those infertility antibodies, and, using genetic engineering techniques, had inserted the genes into ordinary corn seeds used to produce corn plants. In this manner, in reality they produced a concealed contraceptive embedded in corn meant for human consumption. “Essentially, the antibodies are attracted to surface receptors on the sperm,” said Hein. “They latch on and make each sperm so heavy it cannot move forward. It just shakes about as if it was doing the lambada.” 15 Hein claimed it was a possible solution to world “over-population.” The moral and ethical issues of feeding it to humans in Third World poor countries without their knowing it countries he left out of his remarks.
Spermicides hidden in GMO corn provided to starving Third World populations through the generosity of the Gates’ foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Kofi Annan’s AGRA or vaccines that contain undisclosed sterilization agents are just two documented cases of using vaccines or GMO seeds to “reduce population.”
...
Gates’ TED2010 speech on zero emissions and population reduction is consistent with a report that appeared in New York City’s ethnic media, Irish.Central.com in May 2009. According to the report, a secret meeting took place on May 5, 2009 at the home of Sir Paul Nurse, President of Rockefeller University, among some of the wealthiest people in America. Investment guru Warren Buffett who in 2006 decided to pool his $30 billion Buffett Foundation into the Gates foundation to create the world’s largest private foundation with some $60 billions of tax-free dollars was present. Banker David Rockefeller was the host.
The exclusive letter of invitation was signed by Gates, Rockefeller and Buffett. They decided to call themselves the “Good Club.” Also present was media czar Ted Turner, billionaire founder of CNN who stated in a 1996 interview for the Audubon nature magazine, where he said that a 95% reduction of world population to between 225-300 million would be “ideal.” In a 2008 interview at Philadelphia’s Temple University, Turner fine-tuned the number to 2 billion, a cut of more than 70% from today’s population.
...
But the central theme and purpose of the secret Good Club meeting of the plutocrats was the priority concern posed by Bill Gates, namely, how to advance more effectively their agenda of birth control and global population reduction. In the talks a consensus reportedly emerged that they would “back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat.” 18
Global Eugenics agenda
Gates and Buffett are major funders of global population reduction programs, as is Turner, whose UN Foundation was created to funnel $1 billion of his tax-free stock option earnings in AOL-Time-Warner into various birth reduction programs in the developing world.19 The programs in Africa and elsewhere are masked as philanthropy and providing health services for poor Africans. In reality they involve involuntary population sterilization via vaccination and other medicines that make women of child-bearing age infertile. The Gates Foundation, where Buffett deposited the bulk of his wealth two years ago, is also backing introduction of GMO seeds into Africa under the cloak of the Kofi Annan-led ‘Second Green Revolution’ in Africa. The introduction of GMO patented seeds in Africa to date has met with enormous indigenous resistance.
BANGALORE: Criticising Genetically Modified (GM) products could land you in jail — if the draconian draft Biotechnology Regulatory Authority Bill (BRAB) of 2009, which will be tabled in the current session of the parliament by the UPA government, is passed.
In an unprecedented muzzle on the right to freedom of speech of the citizen, Chapter 13 section 63 of the draft bill says, “Whoever, without any evidence or scientific record misleads the public about the safety of the organisms and products…shall be punished with imprisonment for a term that shall not be less than six months but which may extend to one year and with fine which may extend to two lakh rupees or with both.”
“What they are doing is much worse than what Hitler or Mussolini did. Through this bill, they want to take absolute authority. They are behaving like a vendor instead of a regulator,” Pushpa M Bhargava, a member of the Supreme Court appointed Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) said.
There are also other provisions in this bill which are disconcerting.
Article 27 (1) of the bill seeks to keep the information related to the research, approval and science of the GM Products out of the purview of the Right to Information ( RTI) Act.
In other words, farmers, NGO’s and Environmental groups that have been on the forefront of the campaign against BT Brinjal and other genetically modified crops, can longer obtain information about it.
Not only that, the three member experts of the Department of Biotechnology will override any existing legislation about GM technology in the states.
The draft bill also states that the BRAI will set up its own appellate tribunal which will have the jurisdiction to hear arguments on the issues concerning biotechnology. In case of any disputes, petitioners can only approach the Supreme Court of India.
“The BRAI bill is more draconian than what the nation faced during the Emergency ‘’ says Devinder Sharma, writer and Food Policy Analyst. “If the Bill was already in force, I would have been in jail.
Greece must consider a fire sale of land, historic buildings and art works to cut its debts, two rightwing German politicians said today in a newspaper interview that is bound to exacerbate tensions between Athens and Berlin.
Alongside austerity measures such as cuts to public sector pay and a freeze on state pensions, why not sell a few uninhabited islands or ancient artefacts, asked Josef Schlarmann, a senior member of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, and Frank Schaeffler, a finance policy expert in the Free Democrats.
The Acropolis and the Parthenon could also fall under the hammer, along with temptingly idyllic Aegean islands still under state ownership, in a rush to keep bankruptcy at bay.
"Those in insolvency have to sell everything they have to pay their creditors," Schlarmann told Bild newspaper. "Greece owns buildings, companies and uninhabited islands, which could all be used for debt redemption."
Only yesterday the ruling socialist government in Greece published its third attempt to reduce the country's debts and please EU governments, which have pledged to support the beleaguered economy if austerity measures are enacted.
Strikes and street protests have already threatened to bring many industries and public services to a standstill if the cuts go ahead.
But Germans remain unmoved by the troubles facing Greece. Opinion polls show Germans are overwhelmingly against a Berlin-funded bailout. Greece's deficit was 12.7% of national income in 2009, well ahead of the EU's 3% limit.
Merkel will meet the Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, in Berlin on Friday.
"The chancellor cannot promise Greece any help," Schaeffler told Bild in a story under the headline: "Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks! And sell the Acropolis too!"
"The Greek government has to take radical steps to sell its property – for example its uninhabited islands," Schaeffler told Germany's best-selling daily newspaper.
Greece's deputy foreign minister, Dimitris Droutsas, was asked about the idea in an interview with ARD TV. "I've also heard the suggestion we should sell the Acropolis," Droutsas said. "Suggestions like this are not appropriate at this time."
Germans have had an allergic reaction to reports their country may be part of a bailout for Greece. Many fear it could lead to similar calls for cash from Spain and Portugal, which have also been badly hit following the financial crash.
Europe's biggest economy itself is only just creeping out of its worst postwar recession. Last week figures revealed the German economy had stalled, while separately, politicians wrestled with a bigger bailout for its second-largest bank, Commerzbank, which purchased billions of pounds worth of exotic financial instruments linked to US sub-prime mortgages.
Greeks reacted with outrage to the proposals today, with many taking to the airwaves to complain about all things Teutonic.
"I don't mind so much about the austerity measures, it's the Germans," a former government employee told a radio host. "The suggestion that we now sell off our national assets has got me so angry I am boycotting all their products."
The country's consumer federation, INKA, summoned Greeks to boycott German products, including supermarket chains and car dealerships, following a spasm of national fury at the way the country was being portrayed by the German media.
"The pressure the Germans are putting us under is outrageous," said Sarandi Pitsas, a pensioner who took to the streets to protest against the austerity measures. "When we were carving beautiful statues like the Venus de Milos," he said, referring to the cover of a German magazine which showed the statue gesturing obscenely under the headline 'Greek cheats', "they were living in caves and growling like dogs."
Five days after it was launched, the 100,000-strong consumer group says the boycott of products and shops is going splendidly. "The response has been immense," Haralambous Velidarakis, a board member of INKA, said. "This is not against the German people but in protest against sustained attacks from the German government, which will lead to the impoverishment of Greeks."
Greece's satirical weekly To Pontiki (the mouse) put it another way today. Its front-page cover asked: "Does Greece belong to the Greeks?"
The European Union has approved its first genetically modified plant since 1998. Though it claims its green light for BASF's Amflora potato breed is based on "sound science," that will do little to satisfy opponents. German editorialists differ in their stances on the debate over what critics call "Frankenstein foods."
Genetically modified (GM) plants have always been a hot-potato issue in Europe. And it's about to get hotter. On Tuesday, the European Commission gave the green light to the cultivation of a genetically modified potato for industrial and feed uses. It also approved three varieties of GM corn made by the American biotech firm Monsanto for sale, but not cultivation, within the European Union.
The EU doesn't view the products as dangerous to human health or the environment. At a news conference held Tuesday, EU Public Health Commissioner John Dalli said: "Responsible innovation will be my guiding principle when dealing with innovation technologies. All scientific issues, particularly those concerning safety, (have) been fully addressed."
According to a press release issued on the decision by the commission, the EU's executive, Dalli will now have until the summer to put forward a proposal on how "a community authorization system, based on science, can be combined with freedom for member states to decide whether or not they wish to cultivate GM crops on their territory."
The Commission approved the cultivation of the Amflora potato, which was developed by the Germany chemical giant BASF, to be grown "for the production of starch suitable for industrial application (e.g., paper production) … (as it) helps to optimize the production process and to save raw materials, energy, water and oil-based chemicals." Though it was also approved for use in animal feed, products from the Amflora potato will not be permitted in foodstuffs intended for human consumption.
...
Still, many opponents of GM plants fear that their seeds might spread, cross-contaminate and affect surrounding ecosystems. In an effort to allay such fears, the Commission's "decision provides for strict cultivation conditions to prevent the possibility that GM potatoes will not be inadvertently disseminated into the wider environment." Another fear relates to how Amflora contains a marker gene that makes it resistant to antibiotics.
Responses from European governments and environmental organizations were swift. Austria said it planned to immediately outlaw growing the potato, and Italy's agriculture minister said he planned "to defend and safeguard traditional agriculture and citizens' health."
Heike Moldenhauer, a spokeswoman for the Friends of the Earth Europe environmental group, told the AP that the decision "puts profits before people." Hubert Weiger, the president of the German branch of Friends of Earth, called the decision "a political genuflection towards BASF."
Spiritual Evolution
