Sandra Finley

2011-01-13 Globe & Mail describes Lockheed Martin as “the technology giant”

 Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials)  No Responses »
Jan 132011
 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/activist-convicted-for-refusing-to-fill-out-long-form-census/article1869091/ 

Sandra Finley was found guilty of not filling out the 2006 census in a Saskatoon provincial court on Jan. 14, 2010. - Sandra Finley was found guilty of not filling out the 2006 census in a Saskatoon provincial court on Jan. 14, 2010. | David Stobbe for The Globe and Mail

Activist convicted for refusing to fill out long-form census

JOSH WINGROVE

EDMONTON— Globe and Mail Update
Published Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011 3:44PM EST
Last updated Friday, Jan. 14, 2011 9:11AM EST

Sandra Finley and Tony Clement are hardly a natural fit as political allies – she’s a 61-year-old Green Party activist from Saskatoon, and he’s a federal Conservative cabinet minister.

But in Mr. Clement’s ongoing fight to convince the Canadian public of the merits of his government’s decision to do away with the mandatory long-form census, a case that has left Ms. Finley facing jail time may prove politically valuable.

Video

Clement stands firm on census

 “I’m in with strange political bedfellows at the moment,” Ms. Finley said, laughing.

The lifelong activist and former leader of the small Saskatchewan Green Party was found guilty in a Saskatoon court Thursday morning of refusing to fill out her long-form census in 2006. She had entered court hoping for an acquittal and help with her legal fees; instead, she’s facing a fine and, potentially, jail time.

“To me, it’s rather ludicrous,” the activist said.

For eight years, Ms. Finley has repeatedly criticized the form as unnecessarily intrusive, and she objects to Canada’s decision to contract out census work to technology giant Lockheed Martin. When her census arrived in 2006, she refused to fill it out. After repeated warnings, she was charged under the Statistics Canada Act in March, 2008.

The principled stand, with its legal fallout, is precisely the type of case invoked by Mr. Clement, the Industry Minister, in justifying his move to make the long-form document optional.

Many within Statistics Canada, which reports to Mr. Clement, fear the move will skew the census, and the agency’s chief statistician, Munir Sheikh, resigned amid the uproar over last summer’s decision to make it optional. Ms. Finley supports the change, even though it will do her no good.

“It’s not any use, because that charging section still applies based on 2006,” said Steven Seiferling, Ms. Finley’s attorney.

Ms. Finley acknowledged she didn’t fill out the form. Rather, she argued that the required long-form document violated her right under Section Eight of the Charter, which restricts “unreasonable search or seizure” of information. In a provincial court ruling, Judge S.P. Whelan dismissed the notion, saying Ms. Finley and her attorney “did not meet the burden of establishing a breach” of the section.

Ms. Finley said she’ll almost certainly appeal. She will be back in court on Jan. 20 for sentencing, where she faces up to three months in prison, a $500 fine or some combination of the two.

She’s not the first to be convicted – among a handful of previous cases, Todd Stelmach, a Kingston resident, was convicted in 2009 of the same offence, and was fined $300. Mr. Seiferling pointed to that case as a possible sentencing precedent for Ms. Finley, though she could face worse, including a criminal record if sent to jail.

Nevertheless, Ms. Finley remains defiant and said Thursday she won’t pay any fine. “I’m in a position where, am I going to pay the fine? And I think the answer to that is, well, no,” she said. “They’re going to have to do something.”

For the 2006 census, Statistics Canada referred 64 cases to the Justice Department after people repeatedly refused to complete the form, but the agency says prosecutions are not its decision. “The decision to lay charges is the sole responsibility of the Public Prosecution Service of Canada,” Statistics Canada said in a statement.

If Ms. Finley continues to appeal and is eventually successful, a court could conceivably strike down the requirement to complete the form and save the Harper government the political hassle of following through on its pledge to do so. Requests for comment from Mr. Clement and the Prime Minister’s Office weren’t returned.

“The focus of the case is whether or not the long-form census, or the collection of personal information by the government for statistical purposes, is a violation of Canadian privacy,” Mr. Seiferling said. “That’s going to continue to be the process as it goes up through the appeals process.”

Although she bears the legal responsibility to prove her Charter rights have been violated, and the judge ruled she failed to do so, Ms. Finley stands firm in her belief that the long-form document is too intrusive. Now, she awaits her sentence and plans a potential appeal after what she took as a surprising verdict Thursday morning.

“I’m equally confident that I won’t be sent to jail,” she said, “but my history of predicting what will happen in the justice system appears to be not very good.”

2011-01-13 Census Lockheed Martin Trial: R. v. Finley, verdict is “guilty”

 Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials)  No Responses »
Jan 132011
 

I am shocked, the lawyer (Steve Seiferling) is shocked.   The Charter Right to Privacy of personal information is clearly articulated in the law. 

The date for sentencing may be next week. 

I will be meeting with Steve later today after he has reviewed the 40-page decision.   It is hard for me to imagine the circumstances under which I would not appeal the decision.  

I don’t have an electronic or scanned copy of the decision yet.  I’ll make it available on-line when I do. 

Will keep you posted on developments. 

And hey, what a world we live in!   It’s as though they want to give me lots more opportunities to talk about Lockheed Martin’s role in Canada!  Thank-you, thank-you, I will do my best to make good use. 

Do not hold me to this, because I don’t know if anyone would come out to a public meeting on the topic:  maybe I will need to do a speaking tour to explain things and to raise money for legal costs.   I expected not only to be found innocent;  I expected I would be awarded costs.   The guilty verdict is my comeuppance for being confident I guess! 

Cheers,

Sandra

2011-01-13 The Rational Argument, Lockheed Martin in the Canadian census

 Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials)  No Responses »
Jan 132011
 

2013-10:  The Rational Argument needs to be updated to include what was known, but is now confirmed through the leaks by Edward Snowden.   See postings on this blog.  Canadians have got to be crazy to stand by and do nothing about the involvement of Lockheed Martin Corporation in the data base on Canadians at StatsCan.

One of Lockheed Martin’s specialties is surveillance.  The Snowden leaks tell the story of back-door access to data bases.  Ladar Levison’s experience tells the extent to which the NSA will go to coerce the owners of data bases to provide access.   There is no doubt about the connection between Lockheed and the NSA.

2013-04-15 Lockheed Martin, leading provider of cyber security technology and services to NSA

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Lockheed Martin was awarded census contracts by 2003 for the 2006 census.  Thousands of people protested then; more protested in 2006 during the census.

Lockheed Martin was awarded contracts for the May 2011 census.

It is foolhardy to support the involvement of Lockheed Martin in the data base on Canadians at StatsCan through silence or inaction.  There is an informative, short interview with William Hartung, author of “Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex” at http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/too-big-to-fail-lockheed-martins-got-their-fingers-everywhere-says-author-yftt_535769.html

I cannot explain Lockheed Martin better than William Hartung, except that in the short interview he can’t address

  • the weapons they manufacture which are in contravention of International and Canadian laws,
  • their role at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib,
  • etc..

Other postings on this blog provide some of that elaboration.

Furthermore,  it is important to understand the context  within which the census contracts for Lockheed Martin Corp are set.  Most people know these things but some do not integrate them into their understanding.   There are implications for Canada.  Think:

  • the American southwest is running out of water.   (addressed in earlier postings – – see the sub-category Resource depletion (water in the U.S.) under Peace or Violence).

The science is from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at San Diego (2007).  In the summer of 2009 I spoke with Tim Barnett, the lead scientist, to inquire if the situation has improved.   He said (words to effect)  no, the steps taken to reverse falling water levels are small and totally inadequate.   The science stands:  there is a 50/50 chance that the two largest water reservoirs in the U.S., on the Colorado River behind the Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams will be dry by 2021 and they will lose their hydro-electric capacity by 2017.   50/50 chance based on the unbroken line of falling water levels in the reservoirs since the 1990s.

It seems to me (Sandra) that our political institutions are incapable of dealing effectively with known and extremely serious situations that are a much greater threat to our security than the human enemies being created.   We cannot rely on the Governments to find solutions;  we had better think for ourselves.

So WHAT IS THE PLAN?  Surely there is a plan somewhere, surely someone has some idea of where the water will come from?  Surely there is a back-up plan when you know for certain that there will be pandemonium if (50/50 chance) the well runs dry.

  • Is this the Plan?  When the American corporations want access to resources that will be money-makers they typically drop bombs on people (Iraq – oil).  Or set up puppet governments.   Or assassinate the people’s leaders.  They find quislings in a nation-state that has coveted resources.

Democracy fails, propaganda replaces journalism, the state must increasingly use coercion and violence to control the population.

That’s when data files on citizens become a tool for the now-police-state.  Corporate interests run the show; they appropriate the resources one way or the other and they do not care about any outcome beyond corporate profits.

  • It is possible to see danger lurking on the horizon.  You can hope it won’t come, or you can rise up to prevent it from manifesting.
  • You have to be dangerously naive to allow Lockheed Martin (the American military) anywhere near a large and  growingly comprehensive data base on all Canadians.    Click on  2008-12-06:  The role of mechanized census data in Nazi Europe.  Why we have a Charter Right to privacy of personal information.  Edwin Black’s  IBM and the Holocaust,  the Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation.   Black’s new book “The Plan”  – the kicker is oil security for the U.S.. .   Oil security, Homeland Security, Security and Prosperity Partnership with Canada.. security, security, ha!   And then there’s the Patriot Act.
  • Also, check out:  2011-05-28  Census: Elizabeth asks What is Lockheed Martin’s actual role? 

I’m sorry – it’s late.  I don’t get it why anyone would think it’s smart to involve Lockheed Martin in the data base on Canadians at StatsCan, in any way, shape or form.  Unless you were going to receive a whole lot of money, maybe?

The other part of it that is incredibly dumb:  we are aligning ourselves with the American military (Canada First Defence Strategy, June 2008).  That means unmanned drones, courtesy of Lockheed Martin.  Lockheed Martin who turns around and makes money by selling its products to “enemies” of the U.S.  (witness its convictions for breach of arms export control laws.  And see the SOFEX posting).   In time,  unmanned drones will be dropping bombs on North America.  WHO are the brains behind our “defence” strategy?   Get rid of them.

The next Canadian census is four months away.  When you send in your form tell  the Government:  NO to Lockheed Martin in Canada.

Lockheed Martin is a company that exists only by war and for war.

How dangerous is the American military-industrial-complex?   William Hartung offers us warning.  And from the mouth of a war hero, an American General, the US President, Dwight Eisenhower:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.  

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. 

Lockheed Martin is a main player of this Complex (Lockheed Martin receives over $28 billion per year in Pentagon contracts —  $36 billion of U.S. Government contracts in 2009.)  The company has produced spy satellites; helped the Pentagon collect personal data on U.S. citizens; provided interrogators for employment at Guantanamo Bay;  Lockheed Martin’s reach into all areas of US defense and American life is staggering, their horrific offensive (not defensive) products, having been selected for census work in the US  (as in Canada with IBM as a sub-contractor)  in order to better control; “international surveillance” is one of their operational branches.

Now they are expanding their role in Canada, StatsCan is just one example.

Eisenhower:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

With the U.S. faltering as it is, with water shortages happening and more to come,  with the American government-corporate history of appropriating  what does not belong to them, with the history of violent and corrupt means, Canadians are foolish to allow Lockheed Martin Corporation anywhere near the large data base on Canadians.

Statistics Canada, through its “surveys” is enlarging the data base every working day.   Read the newspapers (posted on this blog):  the Americans want access to the information on Canadians.   And not just on the unruly ones, but on everyone.  Ron Covais, “President of the Americas for Lockheed Martin” told Maclean’s magazine (Sept 2006) that they won’t get what they want through democratic means.  They will get it through the “agencies of government” and the ministers have said “tell us what you want.”  We’ll see that you get it.

If they don’t already have access to the data base, it will not be long in coming.  Unless we are informed, talking with each other, not afraid, and willing to rise up to stop the indefensible.

2011-01-12 New book “Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex” by William Hartung. Timely – Judge’s decision due tomorrow!

 Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials)  1 Response »
Jan 122011
 

“  Enthralling and explosive, “Prophets of War” is an exposé of America’s largest military contractor, Lockheed Martin … meticulously researched history…”

“  It should trouble Canadians that Pierre Lagueux is now a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin.  As assistant deputy minister of defence in 1997 he was behind the original memorandum of understanding for Canada to join eight other countries in the development of the F-35s.”

“I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments.  Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”      Dwight D. Eisenhower

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Sublime orchestration:

January 2011

Week 1  –  a comprehensive book on Lockheed Martin, “Prophets of War” is launched.

Week 2  –  the outcome of my trial will be announced

It could not have been humanly orchestrated better than that!

Many thanks to Eduard, Herman, Chris, and Paul – I hope I haven’t missed anyone – – for sending in reports on “Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex“.

I have been dealt the perfect hand.  . . .    But I don’t know how to play it.  I need help.

There will be a few media interviews tomorrow following the announcement of the Judge’s decision on the trial.

What is the short message I need to get across?

I want to tie in everything together but that’s too much.   I’ll get to work on a draft right away.  Input will be appreciated.

Thanks and Cheers!

Sandra

CONTENTS

(1)    COMMENTARY

(2)    NEW BOOK ON LOCKHEED MARTIN, “PROPHETS OF WAR”  BY WILLIAM HARTUNG

(3)    LOCKHEED MARTIN JET FIGHTERS A COSTLY MISTAKE FOR TAX-PAYERS

(4)    GRAND OPENING OF AVIATION CENTRE IN SASKATOON, LOCKHEED MARTIN INTEGRATED INTO OUR ECONOMY AND YOU GUESSED IT:  MORE GOVERNMENT MONEY

(5)   PRESIDENT OF U.S. DWIGHT EISENHOWER’S FAMOUS WARNING OF THE DANGERS OF THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-CONGRESSIONAL COMPLEX AND OTHER BITS OF WISDOM

(6)   LOCKHEED MARTIN’S MS2  — PART OF WHAT WILL BE AT SIIT, AS I UNDERSTAND

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JUDGE WHELAN’S DECISION ON MY GUILT OR INNOCENCE:

Thursday, January 13, 2011, at 9:30 in Provincial Courtroom #4 (on 19th Street between 2nd and 3rd Ave).

(Charged under the Statistics Act for failure to comply with the 2006 census which I did not do because of Lockheed Martin’s involvement.)

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(1)   COMMENTARY

There will be at least some media reporting on the outcome of my trial.

The thing that makes me nervous about the court decision isn’t the outcome.

It’s whether I can find the words to convey

–        My extreme agitation at the thought of what Canadians have become part of, with Lockheed Martin

–        The magnitude of what Lockheed Martin Corporation does and is, in today’s world.

–        The threat that Lockheed Martin represents in a time when the Americans are close to running out of water in the southwest

–        The betrayal of Canadians by Canadian officialdom.

I want to use words that may not play well in the media like “horrified”.  And I only become more horrified the more I learn.

The new book, (item #2) “Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex”  (William Hartung, $33)  is a timely, serendipitous gift!

I’d love to be able to take copies of “Prophets of War” to the Court House, one for the Judge, another for the Prosecutor and one to show journalists.  The Bookstore is expecting copies – I will know by 5:00 whether they arrive today, in time for tomorrow.

You may remember 2 emails about Lockheed Martin moving into the Saskatoon area:

–        2010-04-11   Lockheed Martin setting up near Saskatoon at Whitecap.  Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (unmanned drones).

–        2010-06-26   Aerospace Giant Lockheed Martin Donating  $3.5 Million  Training Package to the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technology (SIIT) in Saskatoon    “The center is an expression of a successful public private partnership with Industrial and Regional Benefits related to military defence procurement at the core.”

I laugh when they call this the “defence” industry.  No one mentions Lockheed Martin’s “products”:  unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or “drones”), cluster munitions, weapons with Depleted Uranium (DU) (there is nothing “depleted about it at all.  DU is radioactive),  land mines and nuclear weapons.  The U.S. has “first strike” as a policy.  It is bully provocation, unintelligent offensive, assured of generating retaliation and continuing violence.   They have constructed an economy that is dependent upon the waging of war and now they are constructing the same in Canada.  With our complicity and money.

Item #4 is the November 1st announcement of the FURTHER enlargement of the presence of the American military in Saskatoon:  “...  SIIT (Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technology) secured investments from aerospace and defence companies Boeing, Rockwell Collins, and Lockheed Martin under Canada’s Industrial and Regional Benefits policy to support development of its aviation trades training programs.”

“Aviation trades”, a la Lockheed Martin, includes unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s), “an unmanned vehicle for military .. use”  as described in the April 2010 report of Lockheed coming to Whitecap.

Tax-payers are further “partnered” in all this through the Government of Canada (Western Economic Diversification and Industry Canada), the Province of Saskatchewan, the Saskatoon Airport Authority and SIAST.   We are the original funders through “offset agreements” in the various lucrative contracts Lockheed Martin has with the Federal Government.  Remember Lockheed’s extensive record of procurement fraud in the U.S. and the millions of dollars it spends on lobbying in the U.S. and now in Canada?   They are corrupt and corrupting.

Is anyone interested in this idea?

–         What if we bought copies of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books, January 2011) and then distributed them to the leadership at SIIT, SIAST, the Saskatoon Airport Authority, Western Economic Diversification, the Minister (Lynn Yelich) who did the celebration thing, a copy to each of the public libraries, etc.   ?

–         If anyone is interested, you could write a note to one of the people, send it with a cheque for $35 to me.  I’ll buy the books and deliver them.  Email me for my address.

/Sandra

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(2)   NEW BOOK ON LOCKHEED MARTIN, “PROPHETS OF WAR” BY WILLIAM HARTUNG

http://www.prophetsofwar.com/     (The REVIEWS button on this website are worth reading.)

Enthralling and explosive, Prophets of War is an exposé of America’s largest military contractor, Lockheed Martin. When President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his famous warning about the dangers of the military industrial complex, he never would have dreamed that a company could accumulate the kind of power and influence now wielded by this behemoth company.

As a full-service weapons maker, Lockheed Martin receives over $29 billion per year in Pentagon contracts. The company has produced spy satellites; helped the Pentagon collect personal data on U.S. citizens; provided interrogators for employment at Guantanamo Bay; manufactured our highest-tech aircraft; and more.  Lockheed Martin’s reach into all areas of US defense and American life is staggering. William Hartung’s meticulously researched history follows the company’s meteoric growth and explains how this arms industry giant has shaped US foreign policy for decades.

On Sale January 2011

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IS LOCKHEED MARTIN SHADOWING YOU?    Posted on “Truthout”  http://www.truth-out.org/is-lockheed-martin-shadowing-you66741

OR, if you would like the article along with an introductory note by the author (William Hartung),  and a video clip all from TomDispatch, continue  . . ..

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Sandra,

If you are not aware of this journalist, he is good!    Given some of your focuses, this one may be of interest with one of the sentences reporting none other than if you had written it: “If one giant outfit gives war profiteering its full modern meaning, though, it’s Lockheed Martin.”

Regards,

Eduard

 

TomDispatch.com

Tomgram: William Hartung, Lockheed Martin’s Shadow Government

Posted by William Hartung at 10:02am, January 11, 2011.

As a boy in the 1950s, I can remember my father, a World War II vet, becoming livid while insisting that our family not shop at a local grocery store.  Its owners, he swore, had been “war profiteers” and he would never forgive them.  He practically spat the phrase out.  I have no idea whether it was true.  All I know is that, for him, “war profiteer” was the worst of curses, the most horrifying of sins.  In 1947, Arthur Miller wrote a wrenching play on the subject of war profiteering, All My Sons, based on a news story about a woman who turned her father in for selling faulty parts to the U.S. military during my father’s war. It was a hit and, in 1948, was made into a movie starring Edward G. Robinson.

Now, skip 42 years.  In September 1990, I wrote an op-ed for the New York Times with the title “Privatize the Pentagon,” a distinctly tongue-in-cheek column suggesting that it was time for the U.S. to develop what I termed a “free-enterprise-oriented military.”  “Looking back,” I wrote then, “isn’t it odd that unlike the environment, the post office, the poor, and Eastern Europe, the military has experienced no privatizing pressures?”

No privatizing pressures?  Little did I know.  Today, if my dad were alive to fume about “war profiteers,” people would have no idea why he was so worked up.  Today, only a neocon could write a meaningful play with “war profiteering” as its theme, and my sarcastic column of 1990 now reads as if it were written in Klingon.  Don’t blame my dad, Arthur Miller, or me if we couldn’t imagine a future in which for-profit war would be the norm in our American world, in which a “free-enterprise-oriented military” would turn out to be the functional definition of “the U.S. military,” in which so many jobs from KP to mail delivery, guard duty to the training of foreign forces, have been outsourced to crony capitalist or rent-a-gun outfits like Halliburton, KBR, Xe Services (formerly Blackwater), and Dyncorp that think it’s just great to make a buck off war.  As they see it, permanent war couldn’t be a dandier or more profitable way to organize our world.

If one giant outfit gives war profiteering its full modern meaning, though, it’s Lockheed Martin.  You’ll know what I’m talking about when you read today’s post.  As much as any robber baron of the nineteenth century, that corporation has long deserved its own biography.  Now, William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, has written Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, the definitive account of how that company came to lord it over our national security world.  It’s a staggering tale that would leave my father spinning in his grave.  (To catch Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Hartung discusses the unsettling reach of Lockheed Martin, click here or, to download it to your iPod, here.)  Tom

Is Lockheed Martin Shadowing You?
How a Giant Weapons Maker Became the New Big Brother
By William D. Hartung

Have you noticed that Lockheed Martin, the giant weapons corporation, is shadowing you?  No?  Then you haven’t been paying much attention.  Let me put it this way: If you have a life, Lockheed Martin is likely a part of it.

True, Lockheed Martin doesn’t actually run the U.S. government, but sometimes it seems as if it might as well.  After all, it received $36 billion in government contracts in 2008 alone, more than any company in history.  It now does work for more than two dozen government agencies from the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy to the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency.  It’s involved in surveillance and information processing for the CIA, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Pentagon, the Census Bureau, and the Postal Service.

Oh, and Lockheed Martin has even helped train those friendly Transportation Security Administration agents who pat you down at the airport. Naturally, the company produces cluster bombs, designs nuclear weapons, and makes the F-35 Lightning (an overpriced, behind-schedule, underperforming combat aircraft that is slated to be bought by customers in more than a dozen countries) — and when it comes to weaponry, that’s just the start of a long list. In recent times, though, it’s moved beyond anything usually associated with a weapons corporation and has been virtually running its own foreign policy, doing everything from hiring interrogators for U.S. overseas prisons (including at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Abu Ghraib in Iraq) to managing a private intelligence network in Pakistan and helping write the Afghan constitution.

A For-Profit Government-in-the-Making

If you want to feel a tad more intimidated, consider Lockheed Martin’s sheer size for a moment. After all, the company receives one of every 14 dollars doled out by the Pentagon. In fact, its government contracts, thought about another way, amount to a “Lockheed Martin tax” of $260 per taxpaying household in the United States, and no weapons contractor has more power or money to wield to defend its turf. It spent $12 million on congressional lobbying and campaign contributions in 2009 alone.  Not surprisingly, it’s the top contributor to the incoming House Armed Services Committee chairman, Republican Howard P. “Buck” McKeon of California, giving more than $50,000 in the most recent election cycle. It also tops the list of donors to Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI), the powerful chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and the self-described “#1 earmarks guy in the U.S. Congress.”

Add to all that its 140,000 employees and its claim to have facilities in 46 states, and the scale of its clout starts to become clearer.  While the bulk of its influence-peddling activities may be perfectly legal, the company also has quite a track record when it comes to law-breaking: it ranks number one on the “contractor misconduct” database maintained by the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington-DC-based watchdog group.

How in the world did Lockheed Martin become more than just a military contractor?  Its first significant foray outside the world of weaponry came in the early 1990s when plain old Lockheed (not yet merged with Martin Marietta) bought Datacom Inc., a company specializing in providing services for state and city governments, and turned it into the foundation for a new business unit called Lockheed Information Management Services (IMS).  In turn, IMS managed to win contracts in 44 states and several foreign countries for tasks ranging from collecting parking fines and tolls to tracking down “deadbeat dads” and running “welfare to work” job-training programs. The result was a number of high profile failures, but hey, you can’t do everything right, can you?

Under pressure from Wall Street to concentrate on its core business — implements of destruction — Lockheed Martin sold IMS in 2001.  By then, however, it had developed a taste for non-weapons work, especially when it came to data collection and processing.  So it turned to the federal government where it promptly racked up deals with the IRS, the Census Bureau, and the U.S. Postal Service, among other agencies.

As a result, Lockheed Martin is now involved in nearly every interaction you have with the government.  Paying your taxes?  Lockheed Martin is all over it.  The company is even creating a system that provides comprehensive data on every contact taxpayers have with the IRS from phone calls to face-to-face meetings.

Want to stand up and be counted by the U.S. Census?  Lockheed Martin will take care of it.  The company runs three centers — in Baltimore, Phoenix, and Jeffersonville, Indiana — that processed up to 18 tractor-trailers full of mail per day at the height of the 2010 Census count.  For $500 million it is developing the Decennial Response Information Service (DRIS), which will collect and analyze information gathered from any source, from phone calls or the Internet to personal visits. According to Preston Waite, associate director of the Census, the DRIS will be a “big catch net, catching all the data that comes in no matter where it comes from.”

Need to get a package across the country?  Lockheed Martin cameras will scan bar codes and recognize addresses, so your package can be sorted “without human intervention,” as the company’s web site puts it.

Plan on committing a crime?  Think twice.  Lockheed Martin is in charge of the FBI’s Integrated Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), a database of 55 million sets of fingerprints.  The company also produces biometric identification devices that will know who you are by scanning your iris, recognizing your face, or coming up with novel ways of collecting your fingerprints or DNA.  As the company likes to say, it’s in the business of making everyone’s lives (and so personal data) an “open book,” which is, of course, of great benefit to us all. “Thanks to biometric technology,” the company proclaims, “people don’t have to worry about forgetting a password or bringing multiple forms of identification.  Things just got a little easier.”

Are you a New York City resident concerned about a “suspicious package” finding its way onto the subway platform?  Lockheed Martin tried to do something about that, too, thanks to a contract from the city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to install 3,000 security cameras and motion sensors that would spot such packages, as well as the people carrying them, and notify the authorities.  Only problem: the cameras didn’t work as advertised and the MTA axed Lockheed Martin and cancelled the $212 million contract.

Collecting Intelligence on You

If it seems a little creepy to you that the same company making ballistic missiles is also processing your taxes, accessing your fingerprints, scanning your packages, ensuring that it’s easier than ever to collect your DNA, and counting you for the census, rest assured: Lockheed Martin’s interest in getting inside your private life via intelligence collection and surveillance has remained remarkably undiminished in the twenty-first century.

Tim Shorrock, author of the seminal book Spies for Hire, has described Lockheed Martin as “the largest defense contractor and private intelligence force in the world.” As far back as 2002, the company plunged into the “Total Information Awareness” (TIA) program that was former National Security Advisor Admiral John Poindexter’s pet project.  A giant database to collect telephone numbers, credit cards, and reams of other personal data from U.S. citizens in the name of fighting terrorism, the program was de-funded by Congress the following year, but concerns remain that the National Security Agency is now running a similar secret program.

In the meantime, since at least 2004, Lockheed Martin has been involved in the Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), which collected personal data on American citizens for storage in a database known as “Threat and Local Observation Notice” (and far more dramatically by the acronym TALON). While Congress shut down the domestic spying aspect of the program in 2007 (assuming, that is, that the Pentagon followed orders), CIFA itself continues to operate. In 2005, Washington Post military and intelligence expert William Arkin revealed that, while the database was theoretically being used to track anyone suspected of terrorism, drug trafficking, or espionage, “some military gumshoe or overzealous commander just has to decide someone is a ‘threat to the military’” for it to be brought into play. Among the “threatening” citizens actually tracked by CIFA were members of antiwar groups.  As part of its role in CIFA, Lockheed Martin was not only monitoring intelligence, but also “estimating future threats.”  (Not exactly inconvenient for a giant weapons outfit that might see antiwar activism as a threat!)

Lockheed Martin is also intimately bound up in the workings of the National Security Agency, America’s largest spy outfit.  In addition to producing spy satellites for the NSA, the company is in charge of “Project Groundbreaker,” a $5 billion, 10-year effort to upgrade the agency’s internal telephone and computer networks.

While Lockheed Martin may well be watching you at home — it’s my personal nominee for twenty-first-century “Big Brother” — it has also been involved in questionable activities abroad that go well beyond supplying weapons to regions in conflict.  There were, of course, those interrogators it recruited for America’s offshore prison system from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan (and the charges of abuses that so naturally went with them), but the real scandal the company has been embroiled in involves overseeing an assassination program in Pakistan. Initially, it was billed as an information gathering operation using private companies to generate data the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies allegedly could not get on their own.  Instead, the companies turned out to be supplying targeting information used by U.S. Army Special Forces troops to locate and kill suspected Taliban leaders.

The private firms involved were managed by Lockheed Martin under a $22 million contract from the U.S. Army.  As Mark Mazetti of the New York Times has reported, there were just two small problems with the effort: “The American military is largely prohibited from operating in Pakistan.  And under Pentagon rules, the army is not allowed to hire contractors for spying.”  Much as in the Iran/Contra scandal of the 1980s, when Oliver North set up a network of shell companies to evade the laws against arming right-wing paramilitaries in Nicaragua, the Army used Lockheed Martin to do an end run around rules limiting U.S. military and intelligence activities in Pakistan.  It should not, then, be too surprising that one of the people involved in the Lockheed-Martin-managed network was Duane “Dewey” Claridge, an ex-CIA man who had once been knee deep in the Iran/Contra affair.

A Twenty-First Century Big Brother

There has also been a softer side to Lockheed Martin’s foreign policy efforts.  It has involved contracts for services that range from recruiting election monitors for Bosnia and the Ukraine and attempting to reform Liberia’s justice system to providing personnel involved in drafting the Afghan constitution.  Most of these projects have been carried out by the company’s PAE unit, the successor to a formerly independent firm, Pacific Architects and Engineers, that made its fortune building and maintaining military bases during the Vietnam War.

However, the “soft power” side of Lockheed Martin’s operations (as described on its web site) may soon diminish substantially as the company has put PAE up for sale.  Still, the revenues garnered from these activities will undoubtedly be more than offset by a new $5 billion, multi-year contract awarded by the U.S. Army to provide logistics support for U.S. Special Forces in dozens of countries.

Consider all this but a Lockheed Martin précis.  A full accounting of its “shadow government” would fill volumes.  After all, it’s the number-one contractor not only for the Pentagon, but also for the Department of Energy. It ranks number two for the Department of State, number three for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and number four for the Departments of Justice and Housing and Urban Development.  Even listing the government and quasi-governmental agencies the company has contracts with is a daunting task, but here’s just a partial run-down: the Department of Agriculture, the Bureau of Land Management, the Census Bureau, the Coast Guard, the Department of Defense (including the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Force and the Missile Defense Agency), the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Technology Department, the Food and Drug Administration, the General Services Administration, the Geological Survey,  the Department of Homeland Security, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Internal Revenue Service, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of State, the Social Security Administration, the U.S. Customs Service, the U.S. Postal Service, the Department of Transportation, the Transportation Security Agency, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

When President Eisenhower warned 50 years ago this month of the dangers of “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” he could never have dreamed that one for-profit weapons outfit would so fully insinuate itself into so many aspects of American life.  Lockheed Martin has helped turn Eisenhower’s dismal mid-twentieth-century vision into a for-profit military-industrial-surveillance complex fit for the twenty-first century, one in which no governmental activity is now beyond its reach.

I feel safer already.

William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation and the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books, January 2011).  To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Hartung discusses the unsettling reach of Lockheed Martin, click here or, to download it to your iPod, here.

Copyright 2011 William D. Hartung

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(3)   LOCKHEED MARTIN JET FIGHTERS A COSTLY MISTAKE FOR TAX-PAYERS

Thanks to Elaine:

See second article below… Jet fighters a costly mistake for taxpayers – connections to Lockheed… 

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No F-35 Stealth Fighters Campaign Update

http://community.intellicontact.com/p/rideauinistitute/newsletters/ceasefire/posts/no-f-35-stealth-fighters-campaign-update

December 20, 2010

The government and the defence lobby are spending millions of our dollars on a PR blitz to convince Canadians to support the $16 billion F-35 stealth fighter program.

But we have been mounting our own response with a media campaign, including this opinion article published in two major newspapers in the last week. It was co-authored by my good friend, Tamara Lorincz of Halifax. Please share it with friends and colleagues.

I also want to thank everyone for their generous financial support for the  campaign. Our special appeal this month has raised more than $20,000 for the campaign – the best response we’ve ever had.

We are moving into high gear for January, and I look forward to sharing our plans with you in the new year.
Best wishes to you and your family for this holiday season,
Steven Staples, Ceasefire.ca

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Jet fighters a costly mistake for taxpayers

http://www.timescolonist.com/technology/fighters+costly+mistake+taxpayers/3956836/story.html

By Tamara Lorincz and Steven Staples

Representatives from the Department of National Defence have recently crossed the country to promote the controversial purchase of stealth fighter jets.
Unfortunately, the DND representatives have not given a full and frank assessment of the F-35 stealth fighter program, the largest military equipment procurement in Canadian history.

Most significantly, they failed to disclose the serious risks, particularly financial, to the Canadian taxpayers.
In July, Defence Minister Peter MacKay announced the government’s plan to buy 65 F-35s for an anticipated $9 billion, through a sole-source, non-competitive contract.

The F-35 stealth fighter is marketed as a fifth-generation fighter-bomber by its maker, U.S. weapons giant Lockheed Martin.
Despite the fact that MacKay has announced the fighter purchase, the government has not signed a contract with Lockheed Martin spelling out exactly how much each plane is going to cost Canadian taxpayers.

Though Lockheed Martin might have given an estimate on the price, a final contact won’t be signed for another two or three years. Even worse, the cost to the Canadian government for the support and maintenance of the high-tech stealth fighters is not known and would be negotiated at a later date.

This program has troubled auditor general Sheila Fraser, who warned of the high risk of cost overruns and delays for the F-35 stealth fighters based on her audit of the Cyclone and sole-sourced Chinook helicopter purchases.

Earlier this year, the United States Government Accounting Office also found escalating costs and continuing technical problems with the F-35s in its congressional report entitled Joint Strike Fighter: Additional Costs and Delays Risk Not Meeting Warfighter Requirements on Time.

And in testimony before the standing committee on national defence in October, Alan Williams, a former DND deputy minister and author of the book Reinventing Defence Procurement, condemned the sole-sourcing of the stealth fighters and urged a competitive bidding process.

“An open, fair, and transparent process is critical,” Williams said. “Undertaking sole-source deals leaves the procurement process more vulnerable to fraud, bribery and behind-the-scenes deal-making and leaves the federal government more susceptible to such charges.

“There’s a moral obligation on the part of the leaders of this country to treat our citizens with a lot more respect and provide us really truthful, rigorous, detailed and appropriate answers, not be glibly trying to defend things that are frankly, from my view, indefensible,” he said.

It should trouble Canadians that Pierre Lagueux, who as assistant deputy minister of defence in 1997 was behind the original memorandum of understanding for Canada to join eight other countries in the development of the F-35s, is now a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin.

As well, the prime minister’s chief of staff, Nigel Wright, sat on the board of Hawker Beechcraft, a supplier to Lockheed Martin, before he became Harper’s right-hand man.

In a televised interview, Williams said it is the corporate lobbyists who do not want an open, fair and transparent procurement process.
However, Canadian taxpayers deserve such a public, competitive process that gives a  comprehensive analysis and an honest accounting of the stealth fighter program, especially when the federal government is running record annual deficits and adding to the national debt.

Canadians should also question if investing in next-generation fighter jets is a priority over investing in our next generation — our children, education, the environment and health care.

Do we want the federal government to spend $16 billion of our tax dollars on stealth fighters?
Moreover, Canadian citizens should be consulted on the future role for the air force and on the direction of the military, something that was denied to the public by the Canada First Defence Strategy of 2008.

Other countries, such as Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and the U.K. have postponed or reduced their commitment to purchase the F-35s because of citizens’ concerns and the uncertainty over life-cycle costs.

Winslow Wheeler, an American national security expert at the Center for Defense Information, has claimed “the F-35’s bloat – in cost, leaden weight and mindless complexity – guarantees failure.”

We agree and call on the federal government to permanently ground any plans to buy the stealth fighters.

Tamara Lorincz is with the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and Steven Staples is president of the Rideau Institute, an independent research and advocacy group.

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(4)    GRAND OPENING OF AVIATION CENTRE IN SASKATOON, LOCKHEED MARTIN INTEGRATED INTO OUR ECONOMY AND YOU GUESSED IT:  MORE GOVERNMENT MONEY

2010-11-01 Saskatchewan Aviation Learning Centre Grand Opening at SIIT. Lockheed Martin’s “products” not itemized (UAVs, cluster munitions, DU weapons, land mines, nuclear weapons).

No one mentions Lockheed Martin’s “products”:  unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or “drones”), cluster munitions, weapons with Depleted Uranium (DU) (there is nothing “depleted about it at all.  DU is radioactive, the exploded weapons strew radioactive particles to the wind),  land mines and nuclear weapons.  The U.S. has “first strike” as a policy.  Lockheed Martin played a large role in the decision of the U.S. to launch an illegal war of aggression on Iraq, a war of horrible death and misery for the people of Iraq that sinks the U.S. further into debt bringing instability to the entire world economy.

Lockheed Martin believes in contributing to education and providing training opportunities for AME students to gain first-hand knowledge of support and maintenance for Lockheed Martin products.

http://www.siit.sk.ca/news_events/2010/november/01/salc-grand-opening-media-release

SALC Grand Opening Media Release

November 01, 2010

Saskatchewan Aviation Learning Centre (SALC) Grand Opening

On Friday, October 29, 2010 please join SIIT and their partners in the official Grand Opening of the SALC. The event is taking place at #19- 2725 Koyl Avenue in Saskatoon at 10:30 am.  

The Saskatchewan Aviation Learning Centre is a partnership of the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies (SIIT), the Government of Canada (Western Economic Diversification and Industry Canada), the Province of Saskatchewan, and the Saskatoon Airport Authority. The new 25,000 sq.ft facility houses SIIT’s Aircraft Maintenance Engineering Program and the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology’s (SIAST) Commercial Pilot Program. SIIT secured investments from aerospace and defence companies Boeing, Rockwell Collins, and Lockheed Martin under Canada’s Industrial and Regional Benefits policy to support development of its aviation trades training programs.

“SIIT is very excited to announce the grand opening of the Saskatchewan Aviation Learning Centre.  We are pleased to see all the hard work and effort pay off.  All of the students are impressed with the new surroundings.  This is the first training program and facility of its kind in Saskatchewan. We have great partners and friends to thank and share in the success,” said President and CEO Randell Morris of Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies.

“The provincial government is proud to work with SIIT, the federal government and the aviation industry partners to bring aircraft maintenance engineering training to First Nations learners and others right here in Saskatchewan,” Minster of Advanced Education Employment and Immigration Rob Norris said. “This program will help meet the strong labour market demand for aviation maintenance training and, given the partnership between SIAST and SIIT, keeps our learners and employees in Saskatchewan.”

“These investments are further examples of our Industrial and Regional Benefits Policy at work,” said the Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry. “Through the application of the IRB Policy, the Government is supporting aviation education and helping train pilots for the future.”

“Our Government was proud to have invested in the construction of the new Saskatchewan Aviation Learning Centre,” said MP Rob Clarke.  “The Centre will create skilled jobs right here in our community, while positioning Saskatoon as an aviation leader.”

“Lockheed Martin is proud to support a program such as the Aerospace Maintenance Engineering training program, one that will support the growing needs of the local and national aerospace industries for AME technicians,” said Steven Wylong, Director of Industrial Participation, Lockheed Martin Maritime Missions Systems and Sensors.  “Lockheed Martin believes in contributing to education and providing training opportunities for AME students to gain first-hand knowledge of support and maintenance for Lockheed Martin products.”

“Through the Aircraft Maintenance Engineer program and earlier investments Boeing made to help establish an SIIT computer lab, First Nations youth are gaining the required knowledge necessary to enter the aviation trades workforce,” said Gwen Kopsie, Director of International Strategic Partnerships for Boeing Defense, Space & Security. “Boeing continues to build on its 90-year partnership with Canada through Industrial & Regional Benefits programs that benefit Canadian workers, Canadian industry, as well as Universities and Post Secondary Institutions such as SIIT.”

“Rockwell Collins is pleased to contribute and support SIIT’s new Learning Centre that will provide educational opportunities for aerospace maintenance engineers – which are in great demand,” says LeAnn Ridgeway, Rockwell Collins Vice President and Managing Director for the Americas. “We welcome the opportunity to participate in this important initiative that will result in many more qualified engineers in Canada and ultimately will enhance the safety of aircraft throughout the industry.”

Janet Kiem, President of Saskatchewan Aviation Council says “this building, together with the AME and Commercial Pilot Program, is our legacy to Saskatchewan aviation and a very significant achievement in Canadian aviation training.  Everyone involved takes great pride in a job well done.

“The Saskatchewan Aviation Learning Centre is an outstanding example of the role the Saskatoon Airport Authority plays as an economic facilitator in our community,” comments Nancy Hopkins, Chairperson for the Saskatoon Airport Authority Board of Directors. “We are very pleased to be involved with such a worthwhile project and are confident it will be a significant contributor to the development and training of a workforce that will support the aviation industry of this province for many years to come.”

“Accommodations in SIIT’s new aviation centre offers SIAST’s Commercial Pilot students a number of benefits, not the least of which is being at the centre of aviation in Saskatoon,” says Dr. Robert (Bob) G. McCulloch, president and CEO of SIAST. “We appreciate the opportunity offered to us by SIIT. It gives our students greater exposure to industry, and it lets them learn alongside other students destined for careers in the aviation field.”

Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies (SIIT) has been in operation since 1976, offering training and education programs to youth and adults in Saskatchewan. On July 1, 2000, provincial legislation in the Province of Saskatchewan recognized SIIT as a post-secondary institution by way of the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies Act. The SIIT Act has given the institution recognition from both the Indian and non- Indian communities.

-30-

For more information please contact:

Robert Daniels, Director of Marketing and Communications

Direct:             (306) 477-9336

Cellular:          (306) 370-8198

Fax:                  (306) 373-4977

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(5)    PRESIDENT OF U.S. DWIGHT EISENHOWER’S FAMOUS WARNING OF THE DANGERS OF THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-CONGRESSIONAL COMPLEX  AND SOME OTHER BITS OF WISDOM

Scroll down to Eisenhower’s famous warning, in bold text.  Some shorter insights of his first.  This guy had it figured out!

Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040

Full text:  http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html

EXCERPT:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present

  • and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

V.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

VI.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war — as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years — I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.  . . .

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(6)     LOCKHEED MARTIN’S MS2  — PART OF WHAT WILL BE AT SIIT, AS I UNDERSTAND

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/ms2/features/moderndaymarine.html

Lockheed Martin MS2 at Modern Day Marine

Lockheed Martin’s Persistent Threat Detection System is a tethered aerostat-based system, capable of staying aloft for weeks at a time and providing round-the-clock surveillance of broad areas. The United States Army first began using PTDS in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2004.At this week’s Modern Day Marine Conference, Lockheed Martin’s Mission Systems and Sensors (MS2) business unit focus is on showcasing its products and capabilities that provide the U.S. Marine Corps with superior tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance while keeping them out of harm’s way. The Sept. 28-30 event in Quantico, Va. hosts U.S. Navy and  Marine Corps leadership, industry experts, academia and aerospace specialists from around the world.During the show, MS2 programs featured in the Lockheed Martin booth display include: K-MAX Unmanned Helicopter, Desert Hawk III, Persistent Threat Detection Systems (PTDS), AN/TPS-59 Tactical Missile Defense Radar, the 3-Dimensional Expeditionary Long Range Radar (3DELRR) and the Enhanced AN/TPQ-36 (EQ-36)  Counterfire Target Acquisition Radar. Subject matter experts from Lockheed Martin and other subcontractors will be available for discussion and one-on-one media interviews.

Modern Day Marine is an annual conference and exposition co-sponsored and hosted by Marine Corps Base, Quantico. Quantico is home to Combat Development Command and the Marine Corps Systems Command, which is responsible for setting requirements, developing and purchasing equipment and systems.

Besides MS2, other Lockheed Martin businesses represented at Modern Day Marine include Missiles and Fire Control and Aeronautics.

For more information on Modern Day Marine activities, please click here.

2011-01-11 TO CBC: vaccinations and autism

 Vaccinations (incl corruption of science & govt)  No Responses »
Jan 112011
 

It is plausible that autism is caused by a COMBINATION of vaccinations, or by a combination of the heavy metals and other ingredients in vaccinations.   First it became known that mercury (thimerasol) was being used in vaccinations.   Aluminum, another neuro toxin,  is also being used.

The interview centred entirely on ONE vaccination, MMR (measels-mumps-rubella).  The work of only ONE man was used to discredit the question of the possible role of vaccinations in autism.   The body of evidence was disregarded.  

Your guest made a statement suggesting that the vaccinations have remained the same over time.  There are more vaccinations given to children now than in the past.   And they are given at younger ages when development is largely incomplete, hence more easily disrupted.

Your guest said that the incidence of autism is escalating.  Yes.   He spoke of the need to provide assistance to individuals and their families.

That is a typical response of the drug-centred medi-care system.  Construct an industry out of treating the condition.

Why would you not place major resources into identifying and eliminating the causes of autism?   That is a much more humane and cost-effective approach for everyone in the community.

It is the same story as cancer.  We KNOW many of the major causes and have for decades.  But we won’t take the steps to eliminate them. 

Follow the money, you’ll understand why we refuse to work aggressively on identifying and discovering ways to eliminate causes. 

The problem is exacerbated by Government guidelines for research funding:  priority is given to projects that have the potential for commercialization.   There is great benefit to society for addressing the causes of developmental problems, but there is no direct commercial benefit to any corporate entity.  Alas for us and the babies who will develop autism and other developmental problems.

Sandra Finley

2011-01-10 Enviro-Pig = pig genes + E. coli genes + mouse DNA. Seriously. Coming to your favourite restaurant and you will never know the difference!

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?, Food, Genetically Modified, Health  No Responses »
Jan 102011
 

(Scroll down to the articles that make up the “CONTENTS” of this posting.   This first part is badly in need of editing – – sorry.)

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –  – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Transgenic means “of, pertaining to, or containing a gene or genes transferred from another species.”   

These transgenic pigs  =  pig genes + E. coli genes + mouse DNA.    The lead researcher doing all this is Cecil Forsberg.

The genetically-modified (GM) (transgenic) pig trade-marked by the University of Guelph, Ontario is real and it is intended to enter the food system.   When?  . .   see item #2.

Backup copy of U of G webpage:    Enviropig, trade-marked by the University of Guelph, Ontario.

The GM pig is an opportunistic response to problems created by industrialized meat production.  It is a seriously wrong response.

Conveniently for the biotech industry, food that contains GMOs does not get labelled as such in Canada or in the U.S. They are required to be labelled in Europe.   In Canada the battle to get labelling of GM food ended in defeat when the industry bought the Consumers Association to come on-side with them.

See item #13, Elizabeth May on “progress traps”.   She mentions the over-production of phosphorous with its consequences for water pollution that comes with industrial-scale hog production (phosphorous – think eutrophication, think Lake Winnipeg, think “dead zones”, for example in the Gulf of Mexico).

I would like to draw to attention that the pigs are also being genetically-engineered because “. . .  they’re not very efficient at digesting the kind of corn and soybeans that make the cheapest livestock feed. As a consequence, their poop is thick with undigested waste products, including phosphorous.”

Remember:  corn and soybeans are two of the largest bioteched crops.  People may remember GM “smartstax” corn:  inserted into it is material related to EIGHT different biocides to produce resistance to various chemical applications for “weeds”, insects, fungi, etc.  Yes, the problems are created because the animals are being fed materials they have not evolved to eat.  The same is happening with cattle in intensive livestock operations, as with pigs.

There is no way of tracking the health impacts of pork produced from “enviro-pigs” with their E. coli and mouse DNA, themselves raised on a diet of GM corn and soy because the Government regulatory system bowed to industry demands to require no labeling.

You think that we have an epidemic of childhood obesity, diabetes and cancer?   Wait until the full effects of the introduction of GM meat are experienced.  But it will be impossible to establish cause-and-effect because the interactions are complex, and because there is no labeling.

“ …  will be probably the most significant transgenic food to be approved. We’re in new territory,” Steven Liss (University of Guelph Vice-President of Research, now moved to a similar position at Queen’s University).

Monsanto has a long-standing and large involvement in the University of Guelph where the pigs are being engineered.  In 2005 Monsanto tried to patent pigs, as preposterous as that may seem (item #2).

CBAN has done a terrific job so far in battling the Canadian Government over “enviro-pig”.  (There is nothing “enviro” about it.  See item #4, the description of the trademark.)

Now CBAN needs help for the final push to stop transgenic pigs.  See item #8,  register resistance with the Minister of Health and get more people to help:

–        Get information to ethnic groups that use a lot of pork.

–        Restaurants that serve pork should receive a heads-up.

–        Food organizations have a particular interest.

–        Health organizations.

–        I wonder if there is organized resistance in the U.S. where (item #7) enviro-pig is being registered?

Letters to elected representatives will not necessarily win the day, although with a minority Government and enough of us joining the CBAN effort, we might be able to do it.

The problem:

·        unelected Government officials in the bureaucracy, many of them with ties to industry AND

·        some scientists and administrators in the Universities

carry the ball for the corporations.  The biotech agenda is carried out covertly.  So we need to make the anonymous people known, they have responsibility.  If they are truly serving the public interest, they will want their names known – – they are our benefactors.

From item #6 (March 2010),  “Steven Liss, associate vice-president of research services of the university (of Guelph) says it’s (enviro-pig) an important milestone and means that other facilities can now start breeding the pigs for research — and hopefully, one day, for more”.  Liss is now the vice-principal (research) at Queen’s University, as mentioned.

See item #15.   I emailed Steven Liss.  I invite you to make your views known to administrators, faculty and students in the universities, especially to universities that have Colleges of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine.

Also from Liss:  “Canada has approved only limited production of the Enviropigs, in controlled research environments. It will be years before meat from genetically engineered pigs could be available for human consumption. “This will be probably the most significant transgenic food to be approved. We’re in new territory,” Steven Liss, a spokesperson for the project, told  (Link no longer valid)  National Geographic.    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100330-bacon-pigs-enviropig-dead-zones/  (Item #14)

Liss is an academic who got his PhD from the University of Saskatchewan.  You may remember theGM Triffid flax fiasco at the University of Saskatchewan that cost tax-payers, farmers and Europeans millions of dollars?   I will get the emails on Triffid from our network posted to this blog as soon as time permits.

IMPORTANT:  The lesson taught by the movie Inside Job  (released Oct 2010, narrated by Matt Damon, subject of  another posting):

  • some players in academia will sell their souls on behalf of industry (i.e. for money)�·        industry works with (buys) some elected officials who make the laws·        the regulators are sometimes just industry people who have been strategically placed in the bureaucracy.·        Other times the regulators simply get overpowered by high-priced industry lawyers.·        There will be repeated warnings from honest people inside and outside the system.·        The people who are profiting from the lack of regulation and the corrupted products KNOW full well what they are doing, but they are completely without conscience.  They lie through their teeth, don’t bat an eye and laugh their way to the bank.·        The warnings go unheeded.

    ·        And then it’s the collapse of the system.  Everything was there to know what was coming.  The financial crisis of 2008 did not have to happen.  It was catastrophic for millions of people and there’s more to come.

    That’s the template.

    And we will pay the price – big time  —  again.  You had best be informed and actively participate with other citizens to see that WE chart the path forward.  There is no room for naivete or “trust” in the system.  It is badly corrupted.  As Jane Jacobs explained in her book “Systems of Survival, A Dialogue on the Ethics of Commerce and Politics”  when you start to mix the corporate sphere with the public interest, you get corruption.

    Our industrial food supply is not health-giving; it is about to get worse with transgenic pigs, unless we do something about it.

    Or, just fight it for the sake of the pigs.  The media does not tell you about the grotesque creatures engineered by the scientists and then thrown on the trash heap.  Pigs that have had human growth genes mixed with their DNA – solid film footage.  Please refer to

  • 2004-11-13  Genetically modified:  documentary “LIFE RUNNING OUT OF CONTROL”.  GM fish and pigs.  Also
  • 2005-02-07  Genetically modified:  “Life Running Out of Control” debuts  (item #2, the interview with Bertram Verhaag).

Together, we can rustle up lots more help for CBAN, just by forwarding information, thinking – – WHO will help?  (it doesn’t take much when there are so many of us).

Cheers!

/Sandra

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CONTENTS

(1)   COMMENTARY

(2)   2005:  MONSANTO’S ATTEMPT TO REGISTER PATENTS ON PIGS. AND WHAT IS THE STATUS OF APPROVAL FOR ENVIROPIG?  …. WHEN?

(3)   UNIVERISTY OF GUELPH’S WEB PAGE ON “ENVIRO-PIG”  (a registered trademark)

(4)   WHAT DOES THE ENVIRO-PIG TRADE MARK COVER AND WHO OWNS IT?

(5)   INTERVIEW WITH LEAD SCIENTIST, CECIL FORSBERG

(6)   U.S. TO VATICAN, “GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD IS A ‘MORAL IMPERATIVE’”

(7)  GUELPH’S “ENVIROPIG” SATISFIES REQUIREMENTS OF EPA, MARCH 19, 2010

(8)   BUT GO TO THE “CBAN” WEBSITE (Canadian Biotechnology Action Network).  THE BEST INFO.  BLESS AND SUPPORT THEM!  LUCY SHARRATT IS AN AMAZING LADY.

(9)  MONSANTO DEVELOPS “GENETICALLY MODIFIED PIG”, THE PATENTING OF LIVESTOCK (GLOBAL RESEARCH, May 2006)

(10)  PATENTING PORKY  (ALIVE MAGAZINE, #281, March 2006)

(11)  VOTES OPPOSING GMOs CRASH THE ECONOMIST POLL WEBSITE, NOVEMBER 2010

(12)   A NICE PIECE OF SATIRE,  MONSANTO PRESENTS:  THE PORKEN

(13)  ELIZABETH MAY ON ENVIRO-PIG, “PROGRESS TRAPS”, APRIL 2010

(14)  National Geographic  March 30, 2010, REPORTING IS ONE-SIDED, UN-CRITICAL

(15)  STEVEN LISS (VP UNIVERSITY RESEARCH) SAYS HE WANTS TO HEAR FROM “THE COMMUNITY”

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(1)   COMMENTARY

There is HUGE incentive to pitch in on the CBAN effort to stop the University of Guelph, the Federal Government and the Pork Producers of Ontario from putting genetically-modified pigs on the menu.

The Pork Producers own the trademark on “enviro-pig”.

Given:

–        Monsanto’s attempt in 2005 to patent pigs (item #2)

–        knowing how Monsanto works through producer organizations (e.g. Canola Growers Executive bought and paid for)

–        from experience with bovine growth hormone (attempted bribery in Canada, but Monsanto got it registered in the U.S. through their placements of people in the bureaucracy, the buying of politicians, and lobbying)

–        Monsanto’s funding of the Agricultural Colleges in Saskatoon and at Guelph

I think it is possible that Monsanto has a discreet role in the enviro-pig.

Before the call-to-action to join the CBAN effort I like to supply background information, especially for newcomers.

This is related to the “Inside Job” movie on the financial crisis in the U.S. that created repercussions and hardships around the world (posted January 8).   The conditions are the same, it is only the business sector that is different (financial versus biotechnology).  The universities play the same role (service to the corporate interest).  The characteristics are the same –  centralization of money and power in the sector followed by its corrupting influence on democracy and on our institutions like the universities.  And then disaster for the society.

The regulators won’t step in and regulate.  The “influential” people who should know better and do something about the situation are instead content to sell their souls and make money.

In the end, the warnings become the reality.  Who gets left holding the sorry bag?

But it doesn’t have to be.  We have won numerous important victories in the biotech field.  We can win this one.  See item #8.  Mount the steeds!  CBAN leads the way!

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(2)   2005:  MONSANTO’S ATTEMPT TO REGISTER PATENTS ON PIGS.  AND WHAT IS THE STATUS OF APPROVAL FOR ENVIROPIG?  …. WHEN?

For the January 5th update on GMO’s I forgot that in 2005 Monsanto was trying to register the same patents in a number of countries, all related to pigs.  Greenpeace stumbled onto it; Monsanto’s attempts were thwarted at least for the time being.

2005-08-02  GMO’s  –  Monsanto applies for global pig patent

What is the status of approval for Enviropig?   FROM CBAN:

The University of Guelph is now waiting for Health Canada to approve Enviropig™ for human consumption. According to the University, they submitted an application for approval on April 23, 2009. The application and the process for its evaluation are kept secret by the University and Health Canada so there is no way of knowing when the application could be approved, but it could be granted at any time.

The University also submitted an application for approval to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) which is likely a request to approve Enviropig™ for use in other livestock feed. This is because pigs are rendered to feed to poultry and other animals, as a protein source. The nature of the request to the CFIA is unknown because the agency will neither confirm nor deny that they are assessing a request.

Approval requested in the U.S.

In 2007, the University of Guelph submitted a request for approval of Enviropig™ to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration where it will be assessed as a new drug.

Approval requested in China

The University of Guelph is seeking licensees for Enviropig™, especially in China. In 2008, David Hobson of the University of Guelph, and the Board Chair of Ontario Pork traveled to China to “pursue access to China’s regulatory process and potential partners for commercialization of the Enviropig.”

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(3)   UNIVERISTY OF GUELPH’S WEB PAGE ON “ENVIRO-PIG”  (a registered trademark)

Many thanks to Elaine.

http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/

Enviropig™

The Enviropig™ is a genetically enhanced line of Yorkshire pigs with the capability of digesting plant phosphorus more efficiently than conventional Yorkshire pigs. These pigs produce the enzyme phytase in the salivary glands that is secreted in the saliva. When cereal grains are consumed, the phytase mixes with the feed as the pig chews. Once the food is swallowed, the phytase enzyme is active in the acidic environment of the stomach, degrading indigestible phytate in the feed that accounts for 50 to 75% of the grain phosphorus.

Figure 1. Phytase produced in the salivary glands and secreted in the saliva increases the digestion of phosphorus contained in feed grains.

Since the Enviropig™ is able to digest cereal grain phosphorus there is no need to supplement the diet with either mineral phosphate or commercially produced phytase, and there is less phosphorus in the manure. When the phosphorus depleted manure is spread on land in areas of intense swine production there is less potential of phosphorus to leach into freshwater ponds, streams and rivers. Because phosphorus is the major nutrient enabling algal growth that is the leading cause of fish kills resulting from anoxic conditions, and reduced water quality, the low phosphorus manure from Enviropigs has a reduced environmental impact in areas where soil phosphorus exceeds desirable levels. Therefore the enviropig biotechnology has two beneficial attributes, it reduces feed cost and reduces the potential of water pollution. Furthermore, the technology is simple, if you know how to raise pigs, you know how to raise Enviropigs!

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(4)   WHAT DOES THE ENVIRO-PIG TRADE MARK COVER AND WHO OWNS IT?

Note:  transgenic means of, pertaining to, or containing a gene or genes transferred from another species.

And don’t you love it?! The enviro-pig is related to “Natural agricultural products”!  (Who do these @$#^*  think they’re kidding?  Strip them of their doctoral degrees.)

(Link no longer valid)  http://healthcare.zibb.com/trademark/enviro-pig/29733216

Trademark details

(Trademark owned by Ontario Pork Producers Marketing Board,  (Link no longer valid)  http://www.ontariopork.on.ca/cms/en/AboutUs/aboutus.aspx )

Enviro-Pig® is a registered trademark used for Swine Feed Supplements, Medicated Swine Feed Additives, Vaccines For Swine, Pharmaceutical Preparations For the Treatment of Disease In Swine, and Swine Sperm Swine Eggs For Breeding Purposes, Swine Feed, Non-Medicated Swine Feed Additives, Swine Embryos, and Live Transgenic Swine Wholesale Distributorships Featuring Transgenic Swine, Swine Embryos, Swine Sperm, Swine Eggs, Swine Feed, Pharmaceutical Preparations For the Treatment of Disease In Swine, Vaccines For Swine, Swine Feed Supplements and Medicated and Non-Medicated Swine Feed Additives Animal Breeding and Insemination Services, Namely, Transgenic Swine Breeding, Artificial Insemination of Swine, Implantation of Genetic Material Into Swine, Implantation of Genetic Material Into Swine Eggs, Implantation of Genetic Material Into Swine Sperm, Implantation of Genetic Material Into Swine Embryos, Technical Consultation and Advice Regarding Transgenic Swine Breeding and Transgenic Swine Production, Production of Transgenic Swine, Swine Eggs, Swine Sperm, Swine Embryos, Swine Feed, Swine Feed Supplements and Swine Medicated and Non-Medicated Feed Additives and Pharmaceutical Preparations For Swine To the Order and Specification of Others and owned by Ontario Pork Producers Marketing Board. Full trade mark registration details, registered images and more information below.

View more »

Goods and/or Services: Swine Feed Supplements, Medicated Swine Feed Additives, Vaccines For Swine, Pharmaceutical Preparations For the Treatment of Disease In Swine, and Swine Sperm Swine Eggs For Breeding Purposes, Swine Feed, Non-Medicated Swine Feed Additives, Swine Embryos, and Live Transgenic Swine Wholesale Distributorships Featuring Transgenic Swine, Swine Embryos, Swine Sperm, Swine Eggs, Swine Feed, Pharmaceutical Preparations For the Treatment of Disease In Swine, Vaccines For Swine, Swine Feed Supplements and Medicated and Non-Medicated Swine Feed Additives Animal Breeding and Insemination Services, Namely, Transgenic Swine Breeding, Artificial Insemination of Swine, Implantation of Genetic Material Into Swine, Implantation of Genetic Material Into Swine Eggs, Implantation of Genetic Material Into Swine Sperm, Implantation of Genetic Material Into Swine Embryos, Technical Consultation and Advice Regarding Transgenic Swine Breeding and Transgenic Swine Production, Production of Transgenic Swine, Swine Eggs, Swine Sperm, Swine Embryos, Swine Feed, Swine Feed Supplements and Swine Medicated and Non-Medicated Feed Additives and Pharmaceutical Preparations For Swine To the Order and Specification of Others
Serial Number: 75753719
Registration Number: 2699082
Filing Date: Jul 15, 1999
Last Applicant(s)/
Owner(s) of Record

Ontario Pork Producers Marketing Board

15 Waulron Street
Po Box 740
Etobicoke, Ontario, M9c 5h3 CA
Related Products: Pharmaceuticals, Natural Agricultural Products, Advertising and Business, Miscellaneous Services; Scientific and technological services, and research and design relating thereto; Industrial analysis and research services; Design and development of computer hardware and software; Legal services

As always there is excellent and better information on the CBAN website.  See item #8.

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(5)   INTERVIEW WITH LEAD SCIENTIST, CECIL FORSBERG

http://www.dnafiles.org/programs/designing-garden/transcript/297    EXCERPT

JOHN HOCKENBERRY (interviewer) : So far, we’ve been talking about food from genetically modified plants, but what about animals? The U.S. doesn’t have specific regulations for GM animals. You won’t find any GM salmon at the fish counter yet or hamburger at the meat case or bacon either.

Canadian scientist Cecil Forsberg has been working for years to market his ““Enviropig”s.” They would have a tough time getting to market in the U.S., because they’ve been engineered using e-coli. In Canada, GM animals are called “novel foods,” and even there, the ““Enviropig” have been stuck in the pen. The DNA Files producer Brian Mann has the story.

BRIAN MANN: A mile outside of Guelph, Ontario, the tree lined streets give way to fields and stretches of wood. Microbiologist Cecil Forsberg points me down a gravel drive towards what looks like a modern industrial farm.

CECIL FORSBERG: You make a left turn. I’d stay away from the front door where your vehicle can pick up the smell.

BRIAN MANN: It’s a rental. So I don’t mind the smell. [Cecil laughs.]

BRIAN MANN: We park a safe distance away. Despite the wind, there is an odor–cows and mowed grass, but overwhelming it all, the sickly sweet stench of pig manure. Forsberg opens the door to a sprawling barn operated by the University of Guelph. The building is part pigsty, part high tech laboratory. Massive fans churn constantly, maintaining the temperature and easing the odor. Pigs are famous for eating a lot, and it turns out they’re not very efficient at digesting the kind of corn and soybeans that make the cheapest livestock feed. As a consequence, their poop is thick with undigested waste products, including phosphorous. For 11 years, this has been Cecil Forsberg’s obsession.  . . .   read more  http://www.dnafiles.org/programs/designing-garden/transcript/297

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(6)   U.S. TO VATICAN, “GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD IS A ‘MORAL IMPERATIVE’”

This article elaborates on industry efforts mentioned in the Jan 5th posting, at the Vatican and in Europe to coerce the acceptance of GM foods.

Thanks to Elaine:

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/us-to-vatican-genetically-modified-food-is-a-moral-imperative/

US to Vatican: Genetically Modified Food Is a “Moral Imperative”
Mike Ludwig, Truthout: “Secret United States diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks detail efforts to promote genetically modified (GM) crops and biotechnology across the globe, including the Vatican, where US diplomats pushed the Roman Catholic Church to support biotech food in developing nations. Cables from embassies in Spain, Austria and even Pakistan reveal the US diplomats have clearly sided with the biotech industry, even as court cases and public debates over GM food raged in the US and abroad.”
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(7)  GUELPH’S “ENVIROPIG” SATISFIES REQUIREMENTS OF EPA, MARCH 19, 2010

Also thanks to Elaine:

http://gefreebc.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/guelphs-enviropig-satisfies-requirements-of-epa/

From:  GE Free B.C.    (GE = Genetically Engineered)

Guelph’s “Enviropig” Satisfies Requirements of EPA

Posted on March 19, 2010

Angela Mulholland, CTV.ca News Date: Saturday Mar. 6, 2010 11:01 AM ET

The Enviropig, a Canadian-designed, genetically-engineered hog, recently edged a little closer to full regulatory approval. But how likely is the pig to ever make it to the dinner tables of Canadians?

Enviropigs are a line of line Yorkshire pigs genetically enhanced to be more environmentally friendly. The porkers, created by researchers at the University of Guelph, have a modified gene that gives them the ability to digest phosphorus in grain more efficiently.

The result? They poop up to 60 per cent less phosphorus into their manure.

That’s a good thing, since the phosphorus in the manure of factory farm animals is known to promote algae growth in water, leading to fish kills and other water problems.

Enviropigs have been under development for well over 10 years, with the aim that they could be one day be sold to commercial hog farmers.

But so far, while the researchers have enjoyed the support of Ontario Pork, a full commercial partner has yet to sign on. And much of the reason for that is the complicated regulatory hurdles of getting the pigs and their meat approved for eating.

One of those hurdles was finally crossed last month, when the University of Guelph announced that it had satisfied the requirements of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, allowing the Enviropig to be produced under strict confinement and control measures.

What that means is that the federal government has determined that the pigs are not toxic to the environment. They are also convinced that the pigs do not pose any other threats to the environment — such as what might happen if the pigs escaped their quarters at the university and integrated themselves into other pig populations. (April here: so what happened to studies on human health? Why do they always miss that?)

Pigs in production? Won’t happen soon

Steven Liss, associate vice-president of research services of the university says it’s an important milestone and means that other facilities can now start breeding the pigs for research — and hopefully, one day, for more.

“This is really the first step in the approval process which, at the end of the day, is intended to get final approval to be able to commercially produce the Enviropig,” he told CTV.ca by phone.

The university has an application into Health Canada, submitted last year, asking the agency to declare the pigs fit for human consumption. Another application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been pending for even longer.

The FDA recently released draft guidelines that outline how genetically modified animals will be regulated. Health Canada has not offered any insight into how it might do the same, though it’s expected they will follow the FDA’s lead.

But the wait for those final approvals could be long. Still, Liss says even after more than 10 years, his researchers are not discouraged.

“It’s been a long haul, but that’s partly because really, it’s still early days in the regulatory approval of transgenic animals particularly for commercial production and human consumption,” explains Liss.

“It’s not just checking off the boxes that the government requires, but it’s also about ensuring that regulators can properly address concerns that the public may have.”

The university contends the Enviropig is just a regular pig, like any other in every way except one: it can produce phytase enzymes in its saliva.

That phytase allows the porkers to break down phytate, which is the indigestible phosphorus in the corn, barley and soybeans that hogs on commercial farms are typically fed.

As it works now, hog farmers generally either supplement their animal feed with phytase or add digestible phosphorus. But either option adds costs to the farmer.

So Guelph biotechnologists decided the answer was to change the pig. They took a gene from — of all things — E. coli bacteria. (The bacteria, as it turns out, are great at producing phytase) That gene was attached to a piece of mouse DNA and then introduced into pig embryos and transferred into a sow.

The first phytase-producing pig — dubbed Wayne by the hockey-loving research team — was born in 1999. Thirty more have been born since.

Experiments have shown that Enviropigs are as healthy as conventional pigs and that the phytase production gene passes along well from one generation to the next.

Liss says the pigs should appeal to commercial hog farmers not only because of their environmental benefits but because they could help producers lower their costs.

“We know that there’s significant risk to the Canadian pork industry, which is not strong at the moment, in terms of the global marketplace,” he said.

But will the pigs and their pork appeal to average Canadians?

That’s an open-ended question. Surveys from Health Canada and others have found the vast majority of Canadians remain deeply suspicious of “biotech” food and concerned about the long-term risks of genetically modified organisms.

That’s despite the fact that about 70 per cent of the food on supermarket shelves already contains GM ingredients.

Liss concedes there will always be a certain segment of the population that will never accept the technology behind Enviropigs. But surveys also suggest that many simply do not understand animal biotechnology or the benefits it can offer.

In the end, Liss says it’s not really for university’s researchers to try to sway public opinion.

“What we do is do the best science that we can. That’s the important thing that the university brings. We’re very interested in commercialization, but what we can best do is bring forth the appropriate science to bear on the question,” he said.

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(8)   BUT GO TO THE “CBAN” WEBSITE (Canadian Biotechnology Action Network).  THE BEST INFO.  BLESS AND SUPPORT THEM!  LUCY IS AN AMAZING LADY.

(Link no longer valid)  http://www.cban.ca/Resources/Topics/Enviropig

(Sandra):  There is a place for suggestions on the website.  Maybe you have some?  I will add some later.

I don’t know if the responsible scientists are aware of public reaction to their work, which is ostensibly to serve the interests of the citizens who own the Universities.  It is our responsibility not just to make our views known to the Government officials, but also to University administrators and scientists.

Students should also be drawn into the discussion.  If there is no discussion, it is not “education” that they are receiving.

Faculty at the Universities of Saskatchewan and Guelph,

–        Departments of Agriculture

–        Departments of Veterinary Medicine

Students in these faculties.

I also think that Departments of Philosophy (ethics) should have valuable input for the discussion.

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(9)  MONSANTO DEVELOPS “GENETICALLY MODIFIED PIG”, THE PATENTING OF LIVESTOCK, FROM GLOBAL RESEARCH, May 2006

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=2480

Monsanto develops “Genetically Modified Pig”The patenting of livestockby Chris Gupta
Global Research, May 20, 2006

Editor’s Note: Greenpeace has covered this issue in several 2005 reports, when Monsanto launched the GM pigs Patent

“The Earth is flat, pigs were invented by Monsanto, and genetically modified organisms are safe. Right.”

Through more patent perversions such as the earlier “Terminator Corporations’ Suicide Seeds” Monsanto is blatantly continuing their scheme of rounding up the food chain from A to Z!

“One way or another, Monsanto wants to make sure no food is grown that they don’t own — and the record shows they don’t care if it’s safe for the environment or not. Monsanto has aggressively set out to bulldoze environmental concerns about its genetically engineered (GE) seeds at every regulatory level. So why stop in the field? Not content to own the pesticide and the herbicide and the crop, they’ve made a move on the barnyard by filing two patents which would make the corporate giant the sole owner of that famous Monsanto invention: the pig. ”

“The big picture is chilling to anyone who mistrusts Monsanto’s record disinterest for environmental safety. And if you’re not worried, you should be: central control of food supply has been a standard ingredient for social and political control throughout history. By creating a monopoly position, Monsanto can force dangerous experiments like the release of GMOs into the environment on an unwilling public.They can ensure that GMOs will be sold and consumed wherever they say they will.”

Such blatant abuse can only continue if it is not challenged.   . . . . full text at  http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=2480  )

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(10)  PATENTING PORKY, ALIVE MAGAZINE, #281, March 2006

(Link no longer valid)  http://www.alive.com/4324a12a2.php?subject_bread_cramb=635

Patenting Porky
by author Susan Safyan

(Excerpt)

“ . . . . . .  Mapping Miss Piggy

Monsanto Choice Genetics™, a division of Monsanto, was the first to complete a physical map of the pig genome (the genetic material of a living organism) in January 2001. This was the first genome map completed for any livestock species. Monsanto is eager to play corporate catch-up with the lead player in the US pork industry, Pig Improvement Company (PIC), a subsidiary of British biotech firm Sygen International, which controls an estimated 40 percent of US market share. Monsanto currently holds about 10 percent of the US swine production market. Ron Schinnour, general manager of Monsanto Choice Genetics™, was quoted as saying “We’d like to build a business like theirs.”

Greenpeace and the Organic Consumers Association, on the other hand, are concerned that once Monsanto holds a patent on pig populations they can sue farmers whose pigs display the same characteristics outlined in the patent claims. Monsanto has, after all, successfully sued farmers, such as Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser, for allowing Monsanto canola seeds to grow on his land, even though the seeds accidentally blew onto his fields. Monsanto’s aggressive stance on protecting its patent seems to make it oblivious to the real possibility of cross-pollination by insects, wind, or rain.

What would happen if a genetically modified pig was accidentally bred with an ordinary pig? Who would own the piglets? Would royalties have to be paid to Monsanto? If you think it would be impossible for GE pigs to escape from their closely-guarded labs, read on.

A Pig in a Poke

So far, no transgenic animals have been approved for human or animal consumption in Canada, although they are increasingly used in laboratory and field tests. The carcasses of these animals are supposed to be disposed of by incineration or composting. However, in 2002, and again in 2004, genetically engineered pigs from biotech labs in Ontario and Quebec were inadvertently rendered into animal feed. Whether the meat from animals fed the GE pigs reached consumers is “unclear,” according to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). In the US, hundreds of transgenic pigs have accidentally entered the human food supply, some as food for other factory-farmed animals, others more directly–as sausages.

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Canada are monitored by the CFIA and Environment Canada. The CFIA assesses the safety of genetically altered foods and products derived from biotechnology, including plants and animals.

However, there is no system in Canada that allows consumers to determine whether foods have been genetically engineered or whether food products contain GE ingredients; there is no mandatory labelling of GE foods, making them something of a pig in a poke. Food growers and manufacturers are governed only by the Canadian Standard for Voluntary Labelling and Advertising of Foods That Are and Are Not Products of Genetic Engineering–which, clearly, is entirely voluntary and, therefore, unenforceable.

An estimated 60 percent of processed foods sold in Canada and the US contain genetically engineered materials–amounting to almost 30,000 food products. Foods that are genetically engineered now include canola oil, soybean products, corn, tomatoes, potatoes, and, in the US, dairy products containing Monsanto’s rBGH, a growth hormone injected into some dairy cattle. (rBGH has been banned by Health Canada.) These can also be “hidden” in food products, for example as cornstarch made from GE corn or lecithin derived from soybeans.

Many more GE foods are on the brink of being approved and marketed. Farmed Atlantic salmon have been genetically engineered to grow faster than their wild counterparts. Chickens are being developed containing genes that make them resistant to viral diseases, able to grow faster, lay more eggs, and produce less body fat. Merck, better known as a pharmaceutical corporation, has produced the MacroChicken, a bigger bird engineered with bovine growth hormones.

Makin’ Bacon

Scientists are just as creative with GE pigs as they’ve been with fish, chicken, and dairy cattle. The EnviroPig™, produced at the University of Guelph, is being marketed as an environmentally friendly product. An unpleasant side-effect of factory-farmed pigs is the enormous amount of pig manure, rich in phosphates, which must be disposed of. When these phosphates leach into water supplies, fish stocks can be damaged, even wiped out. The EnviroPigs™ have been genetically engineered, using E. coli and mouse genes, to produce up to 60 percent less phosphate in their waste.

The Guelph researchers assure consumers that “pork from these animals will be safe when it is approved,” although it is unknown what affect the bacteria and mouse genes spliced into the pigs will have on humans. Moreover, these are the same researchers who accidentally released 11 enviropiglets to a rendering plant for livestock feed in 2002.

Other reported transgenic pig projects, currently under development at Monsanto, involve using the gene IGF-1 (associated with cancer risk in humans) to enhance porcine muscle growth, and recombinant growth hormone (which has caused heart abnormalities in the pigs) to increase overall growth. The Pig Improvement Company is genetically engineering pigs to reproduce more prolifically, resist disease, and carry less backfat.

Pigs with Wings?

It’s entirely possible. Whether it’s tomatoes with fish genes, corn with bacteria genes, or pigs with mouse genes, genetic engineering raises human health, environmental, and
ethical concerns. A number of scientific, consumer advocacy, and animal welfare groups have issued warnings about the inherent and often unknown risks of genetically modifying life.

Canadian geneticist and environmental activist David Suzuki has spoken out against corporate genetic engineering. While a form of genetic modification through same-species breeding has been practised by farmers for millennia (known as vertical inheritance), biotechnology is now allowing us to transfer genes from species to species (horizontal inheritance), with unpredictable and sometimes unintended consequences. For example, salmon genetically engineered with growth hormone unexpectedly turned green, while petunias that had the gene for the colour red spliced into them showed decreased fertility and growth.

Among other possible unintended consequences are those outlined by the Ecological Society of America (ESA), in its position paper on Genetically Engineered Organisms and the Environment. The ESA expresses concerns that transgenic organisms (like faster-growing GE salmon) could spread and disrupt wild populations, leading to a loss of biological diversity. Plants bred to be resistant to herbicides (like Monsanto’s Roundup Ready products) could spread their herbicide-resistant traits to weeds through cross-pollination, creating super-weeds requiring ever stronger, more toxic herbicides. It will be impossible to recall such GE life forms back to their labs once they have been released, and the crops of both organic and nonorganic farmers will be–and have been–altered forever.

The Organic Consumers Association has issued a statement calling for a global moratorium on genetically engineered foods; they cite studies showing the toxicity of some GE foods to humans and animals; increased cancer risk from consumption of GE foods such as rBGH dairy products; serious food allergies to hidden GE ingredients; potential increased antibiotic resistance in those who consume GE foods; and damage to beneficial insects and soil micro-organisms exposed to GE crops.

The Union of Concerned Scientists and the Council for Responsible Genetics have issued warnings about the potential environmental and human health risks of genetic engineering, including the creation of new and especially virulent viruses. Both Andrew Weil, integrated-medicine practitioner, and Barry Commoner, a founder of the modern environmental movement, have spoken out about the faulty science guiding genetic engineering. Many animal rights groups have raised ethical concerns about the grisly and casually cruel ways laboratory animals, such as transgenic pigs bred for human organ donation, are treated.

No More Hogwash

Proponents of genetic engineering say it promises to improve our food resources, clean up the environment, even end world hunger. But each of these chimerical marketing claims has been knocked down as the illusion it is. Mutating and patenting life doesn’t improve the lives and health of farmers, consumers, or the animal species with whom we share a majority of our genes.

Rather, as consumers, we can support better farming practices by buying organically raised beef, sheep, and pigs (which cannot be fed GMOs or undergo engineering), wild fish, and organic produce. Communities in Canada, the US, Asia, and Europe have declared themselves “GE-Free” (see www.canadians.org). Make your town the next GE-Free Zone in Canada. Wilbur and Babe will thank you.

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(11)  VOTES OPPOSING GMOs CRASH THE ECONOMIST POLL WEBSITE, NOVEMBER 2010

The “Natural News” view of what happened is followed by The Economist’s explanation.

http://www.naturalnews.com/030406_GMOs_survey.html

Monday, November 15, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/030406_GMOs_survey.html#ixzz1AVDBIscY

Last week we published a story urging our readers to vote NO on the GMO / biotech survey being hosted by The Economist (http://www.naturalnews.com/030370_G…). Within two hours after our post went live and people started sharing it on Facebook and elsewhere, the Economist’s poll servers crashed hard and stayed offline for the entire weekend.

Before this happened, we were winning the vote, of course. Word had spread among the natural health community, and we all began calling for people to vote. Right after we published our article, NO votes from readers all around the world started to flood in, and we saw the survey begin to shift even more strongly in our favor. Had The Economist’s servers actually been able to handle the voting, I have no doubt the final vote would have been 70% against GMOs and 30% in favor.

But as it stood, with their servers offline, the voting was halted at 62% no and 38% yes. Still a victory against the idea of GMOs, of course, but nowhere near the numbers that should have been recorded.

The Economist explains their server problem

“We had a technical problem with our site,” explains Tom Standage, the Digital Editor for the magazine.

“During the last few days of the debate the address of the staging server was circulated on a number of environmental mailing lists, and on Twitter. This caused a sudden flood of “no” votes on the staging server, causing the underlying database to collapse because it was not load-balanced. That’s why we’ve been unable to announce the vote in the usual way.

Instead, we have taken the votes from both servers and have added them up to calculate the final tally: 38% yes, 62% no.

…Now you know what happened and why the voting tallies appeared to be behaving so oddly. We apologise for the confusion.” (http://www.economist.com/blogs/news…)

When the masses revolt against biotech…

The interesting part about this is found in the observation of what happens when the masses take action to protest their foods and seeds being poisoned by corporations. This mass online uprising took down The Economist’s servers in about two hours. (Most NaturalNews readers never even got a chance to vote.) And this was after many days of the so-called “science bloggers” trying desperately to win the vote even before we found out about it.

If you think an online survey crashing from the sheer weight of opposition to GMOs is bad, just wait until there’s a global crop failure caused by the unintended consequences of GMOs and the people suffer mass starvation as a result. If that scenario unfolds, you might see a mass violent uprising that could very well involve people marching on Monsanto’s headquarters and quite literally burning it down out of anger and frustration.

When you mess with nature and deprive people of their right to seeds, crops and food, you’d better be willing to face some rather serious consequences. When corporations like Monsanto are playing God with the food supply, they’re also playing God with people’s lives. And if something goes terribly wrong that leads to a collapse in one or more food crops, I have a feeling the public isn’t going to be very forgiving. I wouldn’t want to be a Monsanto executive in the aftermath of such a scenario, that’s for sure…

The Economist

Despite the glitches, it’s good to know the Economist wasn’t engaged in outright cheating on this survey. We’ve seen lots of cheating before. There were times in the past when NaturalNews readers were actually winning a survey, and the outfit running the survey would simply take it down, remove all the votes they didn’t like, and put it back online with wildly different numbers. (A lot of online surveys are rigged from the start, which is why we normally don’t even participate in them.)
—-  – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

THE ECONOMIST EXPLAINS:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2010/11/economist_debates

Biotechnology debate: The result

Nov 12th 2010, 16:48 by The Economist online

“This house believes that biotechnology and sustainable agriculture are complementary, not contradictory”

THE voting has shifted dramatically during this debate, starting out heavily in favour of the motion, swinging strongly in the other direction (seemingly in response to an organised campaign by anti-GM activists), and then swinging back towards the middle. But in the end the opponents of biotechnology—or, more precisely, the opponents of genetic modification in its current form—carried the day with 62% of the votes, against 38% for supporters of the motion.

This is a subject that arouses strong passions on both sides, as can clearly be seen in the comments, but I hope you still found the debate informative. I certainly did, in particular because of the comments from farmers themselves, on both sides of the argument. Neither a rapprochement between the two sides, nor a resolution of the arguments one way or another, seems likely any time soon. Thank you all for participating.

Moderator’s note: The result is being announced in this rather unusual way (in the form of this blog post, rather than on the debate microsite) for an unusual reason; a reason that also explains why the voting tallies have appeared to leap around rather erratically during the debate. Several commenters pointed this out and suggested that this was evidence of foul play. In fact the explanation is much less exciting, and rather complicated: we had a technical problem with our site. Non-techies can stop reading here, but here are the full details for those who are interested.

Our debates are hosted at economist.com/debate, and we also have a “staging” server, where we prepare material for posting, at preview-debates.economist.com/debate/. This second server is only intended for internal use, but Google’s crawlers managed to find it during the past few days and added it to Google’s index.

As a result, people who searched for the debate were directed to one of two different versions of it. The staging server is set up identically to the main debate server, which means it also has its own voting mechanism. Votes were thus being tallied on two entirely separate servers; anyone who visited one, and then the other, would have seen different voting tallies. During the last few days of the debate the address of the staging server was circulated on a number of environmental mailing lists, and on Twitter. This caused a sudden flood of “no” votes on the staging server, causing the underlying database to collapse because it was not load-balanced. That’s why we’ve been unable to announce the vote in the usual way.

Instead, we have taken the votes from both servers and have added them up to calculate the final tally: 38% yes, 62% no. (For completeness, the final tally on the main server was 46% yes, 54% no; on the staging server it was 35% yes, 65% no.) This technical problem has not affected the outcome, then (the motion was defeated); but now you know what happened and why the voting tallies appeared to be behaving so oddly. We apologise for the confusion.

Tom Standage
Digital editor, The Economist

Update Nov 17th: The debate server is now back up, and our technical team has combined the two sets of votes so that the voting tally displayed for this debate on the overview page is now correct.

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(12)   A NICE PIECE OF SATIRE,  MONSANTO PRESENTS:  THE PORKEN

(Link no longer valid)  http://www.mindfully.org/GE/GE2/Monsanto-Porken-EarthFirst.htm

The vice president of Monsanto Canada, Ray Mowling, recently held a press conference at the University of Guelph to announce Monsanto’s latest product of food biotechnology. The Porken, a small pig-like creature with wings, is the product of a pig genetically engineered with a chicken.

Developed with funding from the federal government, “The Porken will revolutionize the way Canadians eat breakfast,” stated Mowling.

According to Stephen Yarrow of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, commercial approval of the Porken is expected quickly. “We have deemed that if a pig and chicken could produce an offspring naturally that the Porken would likely be substantially equivalent to it, and therefore no human health testing will be required.”

Monsanto Canada’s Director of Risk Communications, Professor Douglas Powell from the University of Guelph, stated, “Today is a great day for all Canadians: The Porken will feed the world’s hungry, eliminate the need for pesticides, reverse global warming, and will undoubtedly cure cancer and AIDS.”

The National Post’s resident ecologist, Terrence Corcoran, wrote that Monsanto should win a Nobel Prize for this accomplishments. “The world would be at a loss if it weren’t for innovative companies like Monsanto: Who else would try to genetically engineer a pig with a chicken?” insisted Corcoran.

Gord Surgenor of Ontario AgriFood Technologies, a government-funded Biotech lobby group, stated that “Canadians want choice” and therefore Monsanto will be pushing for mandatory labeling.

Joyce Groote of BIOTECanada, another government-funded biotech lobby group, is thrilled with the federal government’s decision to waive further testing. “This new product is the most tested Porken in the history of the world. Consumers should feel safe about this.”

For more information, contact Monsanto at  (Link no longer valid)  www.tao.ca/~ban or www.primalseeds.org.

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(13)  ELIZABETH MAY ON ENVIRO-PIG, “PROGRESS TRAPS”, APRIL 2010

http://www.elizabethmay.ca/in-the-news/the-next-%E2%80%98greener%E2%80%99-revolution%E2%80%99-challenging-the-industrialized-food-model/

Excerpt:

“ . . .   The most chilling of industrialized agricultures progress traps may be the Enviro-pig. These pigs are being raised in isolation at the University of Guelph in hopes that they will be approved for human consumption. The problem Enviro-pigs are supposed to solve is water pollution from hog manure.

Due to the latest craze in inhumane treatment of pigs: raising tens of thousands of animals in single barns— indoors for their whole lives in cages over metal slotted floors—a new water pollution threat has been created. Liquid hog manure in the millions of gallons is being created in these mega-hog factories across Canada. The ‘disposal method’ is to spray the hog manure on farm fields as fertilizer. But the liquid hog manure is rich in phosphorus. The over-fertilizing effect of this manure in water courses causes eutrophication, choking the life out of lakes and rivers.

A sensible solution would be to return to more traditional ways of raising hogs. …  (read more)

http://www.elizabethmay.ca/in-the-news/the-next-%E2%80%98greener%E2%80%99-revolution%E2%80%99-challenging-the-industrialized-food-model/

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(14)  National Geographic  March 30, 2010, REPORTING IS ONE-SIDED, UN-CRITICAL

Gene-Altered “Enviropig” to Reduce Dead Zones?

Pigs modified to excrete less phosphorus win limited approval in Canada.

Genetically altered “Enviropigs” can pass on greener genes to their offspring.

Photograph by Cecil W. Forsberg

Anne Minard

for National Geographic News   (Link no longer valid)

Published March 30, 2010

Move over, bacon. Here comes something greener.

A genetically engineered pig recently approved for limited production in Canada makes urine and feces that contain up to 65 percent less phosphorous, officials have announced.

That could be good news for lakes, rivers, and ocean deltas, where phosphorous from animal waste can play a role in causing algal blooms. These outbursts of algae rapidly deplete the water’s oxygen, creating vast dead zones for fish and other aquatic life. (Related: “World’s Largest Dead Zone Suffocating Sea.”)

Dubbed Enviropig, the genetically altered animal cleared a major hurdle last month, when the government-run Environment Canada approved the animal for production in controlled research settings.

The new biotech pig could take years to pass U.S. and Canadian tests for commercial use and human consumption, noted Steven Liss, an environmental scientist at the University of Guelph in Ontario and a spokesperson for the project.

But the Enviropig’s creators are hopeful the animal will eventually pass muster.

“This will be probably the most significant transgenic food to be approved. We’re in new territory,” Liss said.

The Problem With Pig Poop

Like all living things, pigs need phosphorous from their food, because the element plays a key role in the formation of bones, teeth, and cell walls as well as in a variety of cellular and organ functions.

Swine in the United States primarily eat corn, while those in Canada munch on cereal grains, including barley. But the kind of phosphorus that occurs naturally in those plants is indigestible without an enzyme called phytase, which pigs lack.

Most farmers feed their pigs this enzyme as a supplement. But ingested phytase isn’t as effective at breaking down phosphorus as phytase created inside the pig would be, so a fair amount of the element gets flushed out in pig waste. That waste, in turn, can make its way into the water supply.

Enviropig would eliminate the need for added phytase, because the animal has been engineered to make its own. (Related: “Rabbits Milked for Human Protein; Drug Soon for Sale?”)

Researchers spent more than a decade hunting for an enzyme in nature responsible for breaking down phosphorous, finally finding it in the genome of the bacterium E. coli.

To make sure the modification would work in mammals, the team paired the E. coli genes with a mouse DNA promoter, a section of DNA that encourages replication of a specific segment—in this case the bacterial genes. Researchers then injected microscopic fertilized pig embryos with the mixture.

Early trials revealed that the bacterial enzyme was not only incorporated into the pig genome, it could be inherited by the genetically engineered pigs’ offspring.

“We are now in the eighth generation of pigs, and it has been transmitted to all of those generations,” said Cecil Forsberg, a University of Guelph microbiologist and lead researcher on the project.

“And from our testing, there is no change in the structure of the gene throughout those generations.”

With the added genes, Enviropig is able to absorb more phosphorous from its feed, so less of the element ends up unused and excreted.

Greener Pig Also a Cost Saver?

Enviropig addresses not only environmental concerns but also societal challenges in pig farming, the University of Guelph researchers say.

In addition to cutting feed-supplement costs, Enviropig could help farmers comply with “zero discharge” rules in the United States that allow no nitrogen or phosphorous runoff from animal operations.

Right now, most pork producers meet this law by collecting pig waste in pits and lagoons until it can be treated or recycled as fertilizer—resulting in added expenses for the farmers. (Related: “Human Waste Used by 200 Million Farmers, Study Says.”)

“The cost to produce animals is increasing, putting the burden on farmers in a global marketplace,” project spokesperson Liss said.

Now that Enviropig has reached a milestone, pork producers will be watching to see if the transgenic animal passes safety tests with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, noted Paul Sundberg, vice president of science and technology for the U.S. National Pork Board.

Industry professionals will also want to see a cost-benefit analysis, to be sure Enviropig will be a boon to the industry, Sundberg said.

“Pork producers are in favor of any technologies that can increase their competitiveness,” he said.

So far, no transgenic animal has been approved for consumption in the United States. But in 2008 the FDA announced approval of the first human health product made from a genetically engineered animal.

The goat-derived anticoagulant, ATryn, is used for the prevention of blood clots in patients with a rare disease-causing protein deficiency.

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(15)  STEVEN LISS SAYS HE WANTS TO HEAR FROM “THE COMMUNITY”

(Link no longer valid)  http://www.queensu.ca/news/articles/profiles/steven-liss

“ … In addition to advancing priorities and goals, Dr. Liss will also be listening to the community and paying close attention to the developing academic plan.”

I emailed steven.liss  AT  queensu.ca  at 12:21 PM.  It is now 1:03 and the email has not been returned as undeliverable.   So this email address might work.  I sent him a slightly edited version of the introduction to this email.

Google brings up this on Steven Liss, among others:

(Link no longer valid)  https://cfmx1.webapps.ccs.uoguelph.ca/envbio/f_liss.shtml  he got his PhD from the University of Saskatchewan.  Was at Ryerson. May 2007 he became Associate Vice-President (Research Services) at University of Guelph.  April 2010, it was announced that he is vice-principal (research) at Queen’s University, effect Sept. 1   http://www.uoguelph.ca/news/2010/04/queens_names_li.html   and  (Link no longer valid)   http://www.innovationpark.ca/article/new-vice-principal-research-appointed

2011-01-08 “Inside Job”, movie narrated by Matt Damon, highly recommended

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?, Culture and Ethics, Take back the University, Why we flounder or do not flounder  No Responses »
Jan 082011
 

I just about didn’t go to this movie.   Having seen it, I believe it will go on the record as a critical contribution to the shaping of what comes next.  It is up there with “The Corporation” and “Bowling for Columbine”.    The audience was generally riveted to the screen.  It is well worth making the effort to see it.

Trailer:    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzrBurlJUNk

Synopsis: ‘Inside Job’ is the first film to provide a comprehensive analysis of the global financial crisis of 2008, which at a cost over $20 trillion, caused… ‘Inside Job’ is the first film to provide a comprehensive analysis of the global financial crisis of 2008, which at a cost over $20 trillion, caused millions of people to lose their jobs and homes in the worst recession since the Great Depression, and nearly resulted in a global financial collapse. Through exhaustive research and extensive interviews with key financial insiders, politicians, journalists, and academics, the film traces the rise of a rogue industry which has corrupted politics, regulation, and academia. It was made on location in the United States, Iceland, England, France, Singapore, and China.

Released in Oct 2010.

Some REVIEWS  from http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/inside_job_2010/:

Inside Job really is the movie of the decade, unfortunately.

Full Review | Comment

Jan 3, 2011

 

Stuart Klawans

Nation

A brilliant, scrupulous breakdown of how giant egos and greed led to a disaster that would imperil the American public.

Full Review | Comment

Dec 25, 2010

 

Stephen Saito

IFC.com

Though I can’t claim it’s a work of cinematic artistry, nor that I would ever want to see it again, Inside Job is an absolutely crucial work of journalism that every American needs to see.

Full Review | Comment

Dec 10, 2010

 

Jeffrey M. Anderson

Combustible Celluloid

An exhaustively infuriating recap of the causes and effects of our country’s three decade-commitment to financial deregulation.

Full Review | Comment

Dec 2, 2010

 

Nick Schager

Lessons of Darkness

…will make you angry. More importantly, it will make you smarter.

Full Review | Comment

Nov 28, 2010

 

Philip Martin

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

2011-01-05 Updates: GMO’s, Monsanto, chemicals (roundup / glyphosate), genetically modified pigs

 Food, Genetically Modified, Health  1 Response »
Jan 052011
 

CONTENTS

(1)   COMMENTARY

(2)   GENETICALLY MODIFIED PIG, THANKS TO CANADA.  YOU’LL WANT IT ON YOUR GROCERY LIST.

(3)   MONSANTO’S GLYPHOSATE (ROUNDUP):  IMPACTS ON HUMAN HEALTH AND PLANT LIFE

(4)   THE TRAGIC HUMAN CONSEQUENCES OF GLYPHOSATE SPRAYING OF GM SOY  (ARGENTINA)

(5)   THANKS TO WIKILEAKS:  U.S. EMBASSY RECOMMENDS A LIST OF COUNTRIES FOR ‘RETALIATION’ OVER THEIR OPPOSITION TO GENETIC MODIFICATION

(6)   THANKS TO WIKILEAKS:  POPE ‘QUIETLY’ SUPPORTIVE OF GMO’s

(7)   WHEN AN APPLE A DAY MAKES THINGS WORSE:  GMO APPLES, ALSO COMPLIMENTS OF CANADA

(Note:  update on Bayer’s GMO’s in a separate posting)

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(1)   COMMENTARY

Looking over the recent updates in the field of GMO’s, Monsanto, chemicals, and food, the options are:

–   Commit suicide

–   Finish off the bottle of wine

–   Let the soul be transported by music, forget this stuff

–   Call on your friends:  … hey! There’s an easy thing to do, and …  it will make a difference!

I opted for the latter, lucky you!

First I thoroughly depress you, then comes the trumpet call-to-action – – in a separate posting.

It’s YOU who are sending me these email updates.  So let me thank YOU on behalf of all us!

The following is just A SAMPLING of what’s going on.  It’s a continuation of previous work;  we became thoroughly engaged in GMO’s in about 2003, the battle to stop the introduction of genetically modified wheat.

I have started posting some of that past documentation onto the blog, so newcomers can refer to it if they wish.  The situation has not changed.  The lack of information and discussion in the public domain (mainstream media) in North America is appalling and disgusting.

In 2004 we circulated information on the documentary “Life Running Out of Control” with its footage of the PIGS that have human growth genes inserted into them.  The images of the deformities are hard to forget.  But that was happening in the UNITED STATES.  You will see in item #2  where the genetically modified pigs are in CANADA, too.

In “Life Running Out of Control” the genetically modified FISH were being developed in CANADA.  Now the genetically modified SALMON are in the UNITED STATES.  …  I forgot.  There’s another thing I’d like to do (besides suicide, drinking, sticking my head-in-the-sand  and that is  – – swear.  And swear loudly. There are so many obvious questions that these people are not addressing.  And the Government is part of it all.

I apologize for oversights in giving credit where credit is due for the following input.  /Sandra

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(2)    GENETICALLY MODIFIED PIGS, THANKS TO CANADA.  YOU’LL WANT IT ON YOUR GROCERY LIST.

This is a BBC report.  There is a lot of subtle propaganda in the newscast.  They present only the cute little pigs.  They do not address the agonies of the animals that have gone before, that have been “rejects” in the production process and so on (see Note* below).   They use minimizing words like “small” changes.  And it is inferred that it is only a matter of time before we, the unenlightened, will see the wisdom and accept the genetically modified pigs (and other  life forms).

Thanks to Elaine:

WATCH:  Enviropig: First Genetically Modified Farm Animal  (from blog Dandelion Salad)

*Note: “Life Running Out of Control” (emails 2004 – -2005) would indicate that these are not the first genetically modified farm animals. And also that there is much more to the story.

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/enviropig-first-genetically-modified-farm-animal/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DandelionSalad+%28Dandelion+Salad%29

 

2004-11-13  Genetically modified:  documentary “LIFE RUNNING OUT OF CONTROL”.  GM fish and pigs.

2005-02-07  Genetically modified:  “Life Running Out of Control” debuts  (item #2, the interview with Bertram Verhaag).

2005-08-02   GMO’s   Monsanto applies for global pig patent

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(3)    MONSANTO’S GLYPHOSATE (ROUNDUP):  IMPACTS ON HUMAN HEALTH AND PLANT LIFE

What is being said here is consistent with scientific research circulated earlier:  fusarium (a fungus that you absolutely do not want in the food supply because of the health implications) is a problem in genetically modified crops (wheat at the time of the discussion).  The crops are engineered to be resistant to applications of glyphosate (Monsanto’s Roundup).  In my simple description:  the application of the chemicals compromises the immune systems of the plants.  The “scientists” who promote these technologies are doing an incredible disservice to the long term viability of the food system.  This is just one of the associated issues.

Thanks to Elaine.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_21039.cfm  for the complete text.

Excerpts:

. . . .    Don Huber: I have been doing research on glyphosate for 20 years. I began noticing problems when I saw a consistent increase in “take-all” (a fungal disease that impacts wheat) where glyphosate had been applied in a previous year for weed control. I tried to understand why there was an increase in disease with glyphosate. . . . . 

. . .   There are a lot of serious questions about the impacts of glyphosate that we need answers for in order to continue using this technology. I don’t believe we can ignore these questions any more if we want to ensure a safe, sustainable food supply and abundant crop production.

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(4)    THE TRAGIC HUMAN CONSEQUENCES OF GLYPHOSATE (ROUNDUP) SPRAYING OF GM SOY  (ARGENTINA)

Thanks to Michael:

Watch this 2 part video. It is our thirst for cheap processed food and animal feed that fuels the soybean industry which is behind the horror. I avoid buying anything from the supermarket that contains soybean oil, soya, tofu and pork, chicken, beef and atlantic salmon (which are usually fed a steady diet of soybean), unless the product is certified organic.

(Link no longer valid)   http://www.gmwatch.eu/gm-videos/26-gm-in-latin-america/12580

This news report by journalist Rolando Grana, recorded in Santa Fe, Argentina, graphically shows the tragic human consequences of glyphosate spraying of GM soy. It contains interviews with Dr Dario Gianfelici, a medical doctor; scientist Prof Andres Carrasco, whose research showed that glyphosate/Roundup causes birth defects in doses far lower than those used in agricultural spraying; and the journalist Marie-Monique Robin, who made the film, The World According to Monsanto.

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(5)     THANKS TO WIKILEAKS:  U.S. EMBASSY RECOMMENDS A LIST OF COUNTRIES FOR ‘RETALIATION’ OVER THEIR OPPOSITION TO GENETIC MODIFICATION

TWO REPORTS:

Thanks to Robin who writes:  Not sure if aware but is said to be missing the media – what else is new?

http://www.truth-out.org/wikileaks-us-ambassador-planned-retaliation-against-france-over-ban-monsanto-corn66131

Thanks to Herman:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/03/wikileaks-us-eu-gm-crops

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(6)    THANKS TO WIKILEAKS:  POPE ‘QUIETLY’ SUPPORTIVE OF GMO’s

Thanks to Michael:

December 20, 2010

Newly Leaked Cable: Pope ‘quietly supportive’ of GMOs

By Rady Ananda

Just released yesterday, a November 19, 2009 leaked cable indicates Pope Benedict XVI supports genetically modified foods, though he will not publicly admit it.  A June 2009 cable from the US Vatican Embassy confirmed the Pontiff’s refusal to take a stance on GM foods, which was verified in December 2010 by a Vatican spokesperson. However, this latest cable tells quite a different story:

“Linking development with use of agricultural technologies (i.e., biotechnologies), Benedict stressed good governance and further infrastructure development as essential to increasing food security over the long-term. (Note: Benedict’s mention of agricultural technologies is a small but significant step towards more vocal Vatican support of biotechnologies. End Note)”

The  analyst further concludes:

“While the Vatican’s message on caring for the environment is loud and clear, its message on biotechnologies is still low-profile (ref. b). Quietly supportive, the Church considers the choice of whether to embrace GMOs as a technical decision for farmers and governments.”

Providing much more analysis than the June 2009 cable, the November 2009 cable indicates strong support within the Vatican scientific community, which apparently remains unaware of the biotech industry’s penchant for suppressing science:

“The Vatican’s own scientific academy has stated that there is no evidence GMOs are harmful, and that they could indeed be part of addressing global food security. However, when individual Church leaders, for ideological reasons or ignorance, speak out against GMOs, the Vatican does not — at least not yet — feel that it is its duty to challenge them.”

Vatican proponents of GM foods may have missed several scientific reports [1] that highlight  problems with GMOs.  As previously reported, several times:

* GM foods have been linked to organ damage and sterility in mammals, while others correlate rising diabetes and obesity rates with GMO introduction. There’s also the question of allergic reaction to GM foods, proof of which is hidden by lack of labeling.

* GM crops (and GM forests) are genetically modified to produce or tolerate pesticides. Glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, has been linked to birth defects, cancer and miscarriages in humans.  Pesticides are suspected in causing or contributing to mass bee, bat and butterfly die-off, as well as a pandemic amphibian decline. Their use is also linked to 11 million acres of superweeds in the U.S.

* Further, GM crops cannot be contained. They’ve spread in nations all over the world, even becoming established in the wild.

Given such strong evidence of environmental harm, the Pope’s strong advocacy of the environment would logically include opposition to GM crops. In fact, we find the opposite.

This latest cable further confirms that globally promoting genetically modified foods is a high priority for the US State Department. As discussed in a prior piece, numerous leaked cables reveal a strong focus by embassy officials on cataloging how nations perceive GMOs, boosting GM acceptance in Africa, and even going so far as to discuss spiking food prices to spur GM acceptance in Europe. The latest cable is no different:

“Post will continue to lobby the Vatican to speak up in favor of GMOs, in the hope that a louder voice in Rome will encourage individual Church leaders elsewhere to reconsider their critical views. End Comment.”

Strong opposition within the church cites the monopoly control over food held by multinational corporations:

“The Vatican cannot force all bishops to endorse biotechnology, he said, particularly if their opposition has to do with concerns over protecting profits oflarge corporations who hold the patents for the crops, versus feeding the hungry. In the Philippines, he noted, bishops strongly protested GMOs in the past. (Note: South African Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier’s November 16 comments to a news agency that ‘Africans do not need GMOs, but water’ is another example of specific Church leaders skeptical about the potential benefits of new biotechnologies. End note.).”

Corporate control of the food supply is only one problem with biotech foods, albeit a major one.  After fourteen years of commercial experience, the U.S. is fast becoming the poster child for why nations, and the Church, should reject such technology.

NOTES:

[1] See, e.g.:

GM Soy: Sustainable? Responsible? Summary of scientific evidence on genetically modified soy and the effects of the herbicide glyphosate, Sept. 2010

Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use: The First Thirteen Years, The Organic Center, November 2009

Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops, Union of Concerned Scientists, April 2009

50 Harmful Effects of Genetically Modified Foods by Nathan Batalion, 2000, rev. 2009

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/pope-supports-gmos/

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(7)    WHEN AN APPLE A DAY MAKES THINGS WORSE:  GMO APPLES, ALSO COMPLIMENTS OF CANADA

Thanks to Elaine:

http://gmo-journal.com/index.php/2010/11/30/when-an-apple-a-day-makes-things-worse-gmo-apples/

By Boris Gitlin | November 30th, 2010

A Canadian specialty biotechnology company has asked USDA to approve a genetically modified apple variety that keeps from oxidizing and going brown when cut or damaged.

Unlike the typical commercial GMOs that focus on pesticide or insecticide resistance, the company’s gamble is that tree fruits that do not deteriorate as quickly when cut will help boost sales of freshly sliced apples.  The fresh-cut sliced apple market segment has been booming, but this bet is bound to face enormous challenges with consumer, farmer, and industry acceptance.

The company behind the GM apple is Okanagan Specialty Fruits (OSF) based in British Columbia that was founded in 1996.  OSF exclusively licensed its gene control technology from Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, and it is looking to alter genes of apples, as well as pears, peaches and cherries.  The company expects that genetic modification will be the right cosmetic touch to benefit apple processors and the food service industry, however it is bound for a failure.

While the USDA and FDA approval process has barely started, the biggest challenge for OSF may be winning over consumer approval.   Beyond public concerns over genetic modified foods, there are also worries that this technology may help hide any damage that apples had incurred during harvest and transportation, as well as the real age of produce on the store shelf.  And the company’s actual stated goal is to genetically alter the symbol of nutrition and health and to put this novelty in children’s lunch boxes — that’s hardly a way to win over worried parents.

Already some apple industry leaders have expressed skepticism about the potential of this product.  Why tinker with DNA when we already have a number of existing readily-available approved and safe alternatives that keep packaged apple slices fresh.

Similarly, OSF will face an uphill battle in convincing farmers to grow GM apples. “Genetically modified — that’s a bad word in our industry,” said Todd Fryhover, president of Washington Apple Commission, to the Associated Press.  Fryhover also put the price of replanting for apple farmers as possibly too high to make economic sense. Fryhover’s Washington state produces more than half of U.S. apple crop.

The company doesn’t specify which apple variety was the basis for its proprietary variety named “Arctic” apple which critics dubbed as the “botox apple.”

Whichever way you slice it, the regulatory approval process for non-browning GM apples is expected to take years.  This may be one cosmetic surgery on produce that nobody wants.

2011-01-04 BIG BROTHER: The Police State Mentality in the Electronic Age + The Code for Global Ethics, Rodrigue Tremblay

 Culture and Ethics, Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category), Privacy of Personal Information; Charter Right; Surveillance; StatsCan Censuses & Surveys  No Responses »
Jan 042011
 

It is so amazing!  Yesterday I was putting information up on the blog, coming across things I had forgotten entirely.  Like a warning from Robert F. Kennedy Jr to Canadians about water:  Americans have designs.   The same from Peter Lougheed, former Premier of Alberta, etc.  Along with various emails related to increasing militarization.  I went to bed troubled:  how does one ever get the seriousness of the present situation across to Canadians?

Then the self-doubt.  Maybe I am putting up TOO MUCH information on the blog?  It will obscure the central issues.  But it is the accumulated details that paint the broader picture which is what people need to see.  And I don’t want them to take my word for things.  Give them the information, they can decide for themselves what to think.  Then I wish I had learned the blogging earlier.  Maybe then I could do better.  I’d know how to make only a summary appear, with a “read more” button to make it easier for you to select what you want.  It’s coming but I haven’t quite figured it out yet.

Then ZING!    One of you always comes to my rescue!   This morning I am lifted up and set back on my feet.  This time it is Elaine – –  many thanks to her for  BIG BROTHER: The Police State Mentality in the Electronic Age  authored by Rodrigue Tremblay http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/tremblay=1132 .

That article appears first below and is related to the census work.

But in the course of contacting Professor Tremblay I came upon his words related to the situation we are in.   That’s the real ZING.  . .   Cripes –   I go on a very big high, my energy and spirits soar over the top when you send me  . . .   thoughts that reinforce my own!!   (Now, is that scary?!)    Actually it’s a sign of great hope to me when I see how many of us are saying essentially the same thing.  Professor Tremblay says it exceedingly well.

Cheers,

/Sandra

CONTENTS  (BY RODRIGUE TREMBLAY)

(1)     BIG BROTHER:  THE POLICE STATE MENTALITY IN THE ELECTRONIC AGE

(2)    “HISTORICALLY IT CAN BE SHOWN THAT WHEN THE MORAL ENVIRONMENT IN A SOCIETY IS DETERIORATING PROBLEMS TEND TO PILE UP”   …  ten fundamental principles in The Code for Global Ethics

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(1)    BIG BROTHER:  THE POLICE STATE MENTALITY IN THE ELECTRONIC AGE

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

BIG BROTHER: The Police State Mentality in the Electronic Age

by Rodrigue Tremblay  

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”   Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790), American inventor, journalist, printer, diplomat, and statesman (1775) 

“Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security.”    Norman Vincent Peale (1898 –1993), American Christian preacher and author 

“A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police. Even when he is alone he can never be sure that he is alone. …At the apex of the pyramid comes Big Brother. Big Brother is infallible and all-powerful. Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly from his leadership and inspiration.”    George Orwell (1903-1950) (Eric Arthur Blair), (book: 1984)

“Since information gives power, access to personal files can lead to unreasonable pressures, even blackmail, especially against those with the least resources, people who depend upon public programs, for example. Big Brother isn’t a camera. Big Brother is a computer.”   C.J. Howard, political novel “Cybercash”

In 2049, when the 100th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell political novel “1984” will be celebrated, it will be recalled that the immediate post September 11, 2001 period marked the beginning of a gradual decline in personal liberty and freedom, especially in the United States but also elsewhere, and the emergence of a great information-obsessed Leviathan. Freedom rarely disappears in one fell swoop. Its disappearance is rather the end result of a thousand encroachments. 

Pushed to the extreme and without clear democratic oversight, it becomes the mark of a totalitarian state, when authorities feel that they never have enough information on the people. It is because information is power and state bureaucrats and politicians naturally like to be in control; on the one hand, releasing as little information about their own actions through an imposed secrecy, and on the other, accumulating as much information as possible about the citizens.

And today, modern governments have all the tools to transform their country into a creeping police state, more so now then ever before, in this electronic age. They have access to information technology that previous full-fledged “police state” governments could only have dreamed about.

Nowadays, with super computers and revolutionary new models to gather information and build databases, governments, i.e. bureaucrats and politicians, are in a position as never before to accumulate and correlate tremendous amounts of personal information on their citizens, from public (federal, state and local) as well as from a plethora of private sources. Government intelligence on each and every citizen is thus rendered much easier and, I would add, much more frightening. Indeed, the potential for abuse is enormous.

In 2002, for example, retired Vice Admiral John Poindexter proposed that the U.S. government create a tracking and monitoring system called “Total Information Awareness”, in order for the U.S. government to gather information in a preventive way about individuals from widely varied sources, including tax records, telephone calling records, credit card charges, banking transactions, airline or ship reservations, and various biometric databases, without taking into consideration civil liberties or a citizens’ right to privacy, the U.S. Privacy Act of 1974, or without having to request search warrants and without having to give prior notice to the persons involved. —The pretext was to allow the government to thwart possible terrorist activity, thus creating an unlimited appetite for information.

Well, there are clear signs that this massive data mining system on individuals is now solidly in place and is in full operation and can be expected to grow over time. George Orwell must be turning in his grave.

First, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s network of fusion centers, launched in 2003, has allowed the government to centralize a host of previously disparate information about Americans and foreigners alike, whether related to personal and business records, drivers licenses, local taxes, local infractions, police records, etc., through a host of coordinated information-sharing networks. (N.B.: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was established on November 25, 2002 and is the domestic equivalent of the Department of Defense.) 

Secondly, central provisions of the USA Patriot Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001, allow the government to operate roving wire taps, search any individual’s business, personal, and even library records upon presentation of a national security letter, and spy on so-called “lone wolf” suspects, i.e., foreign nationals who have no known links to groups designated as terrorist. On this, the current Obama administration, by extending those provisions, is scarcely different than the previous Bush administration.

Thirdly, since passports and tight intelligence screening have been made a requirement for most international travel by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, since January 1, 2008, every individual traveling in and out of the United States has all his or her whereabouts and movements recorded so the government knows at all times his or her address and the places he or she has traveled to and from.

For instance, U.S. Transportation Security Administration’s recent decision to use full-body airport X-ray scanners and full body groping at airports is another example where so-called security procedures are applied blindly and indiscriminately. There is more to come, since it has been announced that such invasive intelligence screening is coming to hotels and shopping malls, as well as to trains, buses and ports, etc.

These are some of the main features of the new government apparatus to gather information on people. There are many others. —Take for instance the requirement, since 2002, that all American high schools must give Pentagon military recruiters the names and contact information of all their juniors and seniors. Failure to comply on their part may result in the loss of government funding.

The logical next step for the U.S. government would be to follow a recent Italy’s lead and outlaw outright the use of cash for most transactions, except for small ones, thus providing the government even more minute information about an individual’s income, purchases and displacements. Nothing will escape the watching eye of the government in the electronic age. People will be filed, photographed, corralled and branded.

Indeed, the way mass government surveillance systems are growing, by year 2020, chances are good that Americans will be living in a “Brave New World”!

 —CYBER BIG BROTHER would know it all and it will be watching you.

                                                                                                 

Rodrigue Tremblay  is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal.   He is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics” at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/

The book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by Dr. Paul Kurtz, has just been released by Prometheus Books.   Please visit the book site at:    www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/

The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles,  by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by Dr. Paul Kurtz, Prometheus Books, 2010, 300 p. ISBN: 978-1616141721.

*****The French version of the book is also now available. See:  www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/  or on Amazon Canada 

Blog at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com     Please register to receive free alerts on new postings of articles.   Send an email with the word “subscribe” to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com

The above is presented for educational purposes only.

© 2011 by Big Picture World Syndicate, Inc.

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(2)   “HISTORICALLY IT CAN BE SHOWN THAT WHEN THE MORAL ENVIRONMENT IN A SOCIETY IS DETERIORATING PROBLEMS TEND TO PILE UP”   …  ten fundamental principles in The Code for Global Ethics

Dr. Tremblay is the author of thirty nonfiction books, including a basic textbook in Economics, and the 2010’s The Code for Global Ethics (Prometheus Books), and he writes an international blog about geopolitics on the Internet (www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/blog) that is posted in ten languages.

Now that he is semi-retired, Dr. Tremblay feels that he has more time to devote to big issues. He is particularly worried that our current economic and financial problems are as much moral as technical in nature. “Why do political leaders seem to be lying most of the time? Why is uncontrolled greed so prevalent in corporate boardrooms? … Why does materialism seem to trump everything else? Why do we have the uneasy feeling that our society is going in the wrong direction? The very fact that we have to raise such questions may be a sign of the times,” Dr. Tremblay wrote in a recent blog entitled “The Moral Dimension of Things”. “Historically”, he says, “it can be shown that when the moral environment in a society is deteriorating, problems tend to pile up.”

Tremblay thinks that we are presently living in one of those times, characterized by deep and entrenched political corruption, by routine abuse of power and disregard for the rule of law in high places, and by unchecked greed, fraud and deception in the economic sphere. The results are all there to see: Severe and prolonged economic and financial crises, rising social inequalities and social injustice, increasing intolerance toward individual choices, the disregard for environmental decay, the rise of religious absolutism, a return to whimsical wars of aggression (or of pre-emptive wars), to blind terrorism, and to the repugnant use of torture, and even to genocide and to blatant war crimes. These are all indicators that our civilization has lost its moral compass.

And devising such a moral compass is the central object of his most recent book, The Code for Global Ethics. In it, Dr. Tremblay postulates that many of our problems and threats are not only severe but they have also become global in nature. He also thinks that our scientific and technological progress is advancing faster than our moral progress, with the consequence that problems seem to arise faster than our moral ability to face them and solve them. Dr. Tremblay doesn’t hesitate to place part of the blame on old religion-based rules of morality, essentially because they have not incorporated new scientific knowledge discovered over the last four centuries.

Indeed, Dr. Tremblay stresses three facts that have changed forever our worldview and humans’ vision of themselves in the Universe. They are:

• Galileo’s proof, in 1632, that the Earth and humans were not the center of the Universe.

• Darwin’s discovery, in 1859, (“On the Origin of Species”) that humans are the outcome of a very long natural biological evolution.

• And, the Watson-Crick-Wilkins-Franklin’s discovery, in 1953, of the structure of the double helix DNA molecule in human cells, and the devastating knowledge that humans share more than 98 percent of the same genes with chimpanzees.

These discoveries have tremendous consequences for our moral stance and for the pursuit of a global civilization.

Asked what a more universal civilization would look like, Dr. Tremblay answers the following:

“First and foremost, the scope of human empathy would be more universal and more comprehensive, and would not merely apply to some chosen people, to members of a particular religion or to persons belonging to a particular civilization. In practice, this would require that we establish a higher threshold of human morality, beyond the traditional norm of the Golden Rule (“Treat others as you would have others treat you.”) It would require that we adopt what I call a Super Golden Rule of humanist morality that incorporates the humanist rule of empathy: “Not only do to others as you would have them do to you, but also, do to others what you would wish to be done to you, if you were in their place.” — Of course, the corollary also follows: “Don’t do to others what you would not like to be done to you, if you were in their place.”

Dr. Tremblay does not believe that we currently live in such a global civilization. “My best hope, he says, “is that we will avoid falling back into an age of obscurantism and of decadence, and that we will be able to build a truly humanist civilization for the future.”

To meet the basic criterion for such a future global civilization, Dr. Tremblay establishes ten fundamental principles in The Code for Global Ethics.

2011-01-02 “Expert Political Judgement: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?” Bottom line: think for yourself.

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?, Empowerment, Knowledge Base  No Responses »
Jan 022011
 

Thanks to Hart who writes: 

There is a German custom at the year end: dropping molten lead into a bucket of water. The resulting lead shapes are used to predict the future.

The German paper “Die Zeit” had a short article this morning about experts’ predictions of the future. A much better article with the same content and basis was published five years ago in the “New Yorker”.  The result: the predictions are similar to the tim- honoured German tradition.

The following article challenges our convictions.   The good news: we are no experts.

Happy New Year, and things might turn out differently from what you think!

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Expert Political Judgement 

Books

Everybody’s An Expert

Putting predictions to the test.

by Louis Menand December 5, 2005

 http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/05/051205crbo_books1#ixzz19tAOxZIf 

 Predictions;  

“Expert Political Judgement: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?” (Princeton, $35);  

Tetlock, Philip;

 Prediction is one of the pleasures of life. Conversation would wither without it. “It won’t last. She’ll dump him in a month.” If you’re wrong, no one will call you on it, because being right or wrong isn’t really the point. The point is that you think he’s not worthy of her, and the prediction is just a way of enhancing your judgment with a pleasant prevision of doom. Unless you’re putting money on it, nothing is at stake except your reputation for wisdom in matters of the heart. If a month goes by and they’re still together, the deadline can be extended without penalty. “She’ll leave him, trust me. It’s only a matter of time.” They get married: “Funny things happen. You never know.” You still weren’t wrong. Either the marriage is a bad one—you erred in the right direction—or you got beaten by a low-probability outcome.

 It is the somewhat gratifying lesson of Philip Tetlock’s new book, “Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?” (Princeton; $35), that people who make prediction their business—people who appear as experts on television, get quoted in newspaper articles, advise governments and businesses, and participate in punditry roundtables—are no better than the rest of us. When they’re wrong, they’re rarely held accountable, and they rarely admit it, either. They insist that they were just off on timing, or blindsided by an improbable event, or almost right, or wrong for the right reasons. They have the same repertoire of self-justifications that everyone has, and are no more inclined than anyone else to revise their beliefs about the way the world works, or ought to work, just because they made a mistake. No one is paying you for your gratuitous opinions about other people, but the experts are being paid, and Tetlock claims that the better known and more frequently quoted they are, the less reliable their guesses about the future are likely to be. The accuracy of an expert’s predictions actually has an inverse relationship to his or her self-confidence, renown, and, beyond a certain point, depth of knowledge. People who follow current events by reading the papers and newsmagazines regularly can guess what is likely to happen about as accurately as the specialists whom the papers quote. Our system of expertise is completely inside out: it rewards bad judgments over good ones.

 “Expert Political Judgment” is not a work of media criticism. Tetlock is a psychologist—he teaches at Berkeley—and his conclusions are based on a long-term study that he began twenty years ago. He picked two hundred and eighty-four people who made their living “commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends,” and he started asking them to assess the probability that various things would or would not come to pass, both in the areas of the world in which they specialized and in areas about which they were not expert. Would there be a nonviolent end to apartheid in South Africa? Would Gorbachev be ousted in a coup? Would the United States go to war in the Persian Gulf? Would Canada disintegrate? (Many experts believed that it would, on the ground that Quebec would succeed in seceding.) And so on. By the end of the study, in 2003, the experts had made 82,361 forecasts. Tetlock also asked questions designed to determine how they reached their judgments, how they reacted when their predictions proved to be wrong, how they evaluated new information that did not support their views, and how they assessed the probability that rival theories and predictions were accurate.

Tetlock got a statistical handle on his task by putting most of the forecasting questions into a “three possible futures” form. The respondents were asked to rate the probability of three alternative outcomes: the persistence of the status quo, more of something (political freedom, economic growth), or less of something (repression, recession). And he measured his experts on two dimensions: how good they were at guessing probabilities (did all the things they said had an x per cent chance of happening happen x per cent of the time?), and how accurate they were at predicting specific outcomes. The results were unimpressive. On the first scale, the experts performed worse than they would have if they had simply assigned an equal probability to all three outcomes—if they had given each possible future a thirty-three-per-cent chance of occurring. Human beings who spend their lives studying the state of the world, in other words, are poorer forecasters than dart-throwing monkeys, who would have distributed their picks evenly over the three choices.

 Tetlock also found that specialists are not significantly more reliable than non-specialists in guessing what is going to happen in the region they study. Knowing a little might make someone a more reliable forecaster, but Tetlock found that knowing a lot can actually make a person less reliable. “We reach the point of diminishing marginal predictive returns for knowledge disconcertingly quickly,” he reports. “In this age of academic hyperspecialization, there is no reason for supposing that contributors to top journals—distinguished political scientists, area study specialists, economists, and so on—are any better than journalists or attentive readers of the New York Times in ‘reading’ emerging situations.” And the more famous the forecaster the more overblown the forecasts. “Experts in demand,” Tetlock says, “were more overconfident than their colleagues who eked out existences far from the limelight.”

 People who are not experts in the psychology of expertise are likely (I predict) to find Tetlock’s results a surprise and a matter for concern. For psychologists, though, nothing could be less surprising. “Expert Political Judgment” is just one of more than a hundred studies that have pitted experts against statistical or actuarial formulas, and in almost all of those studies the people either do no better than the formulas or do worse. In one study, college counsellors were given information about a group of high-school students and asked to predict their freshman grades in college. The counsellors had access to test scores, grades, the results of personality and vocational tests, and personal statements from the students, whom they were also permitted to interview. Predictions that were produced by a formula using just test scores and grades were more accurate. There are also many studies showing that expertise and experience do not make someone a better reader of the evidence. In one, data from a test used to diagnose brain damage were given to a group of clinical psychologists and their secretaries. The psychologists’ diagnoses were no better than the secretaries’.

The experts’ trouble in Tetlock’s study is exactly the trouble that all human beings have: we fall in love with our hunches, and we really, really hate to be wrong. Tetlock describes an experiment that he witnessed thirty years ago in a Yale classroom. A rat was put in a T-shaped maze. Food was placed in either the right or the left transept of the T in a random sequence such that, over the long run, the food was on the left sixty per cent of the time and on the right forty per cent. Neither the students nor (needless to say) the rat was told these frequencies. The students were asked to predict on which side of the T the food would appear each time. The rat eventually figured out that the food was on the left side more often than the right, and it therefore nearly always went to the left, scoring roughly sixty per cent—D, but a passing grade. The students looked for patterns of left-right placement, and ended up scoring only fifty-two per cent, an F. The rat, having no reputation to begin with, was not embarrassed about being wrong two out of every five tries. But Yale students, who do have reputations, searched for a hidden order in the sequence. They couldn’t deal with forty-per-cent error, so they ended up with almost fifty-per-cent error.

 The expert-prediction game is not much different. When television pundits make predictions, the more ingenious their forecasts the greater their cachet. An arresting new prediction means that the expert has discovered a set of interlocking causes that no one else has spotted, and that could lead to an outcome that the conventional wisdom is ignoring. On shows like “The McLaughlin Group,” these experts never lose their reputations, or their jobs, because long shots are their business. More serious commentators differ from the pundits only in the degree of showmanship. These serious experts—the think tankers and area-studies professors—are not entirely out to entertain, but they are a little out to entertain, and both their status as experts and their appeal as performers require them to predict futures that are not obvious to the viewer. The producer of the show does not want you and me to sit there listening to an expert and thinking, I could have said that. The expert also suffers from knowing too much: the more facts an expert has, the more information is available to be enlisted in support of his or her pet theories, and the more chains of causation he or she can find beguiling. This helps explain why specialists fail to outguess non-specialists. The odds tend to be with the obvious.

Tetlock’s experts were also no different from the rest of us when it came to learning from their mistakes. Most people tend to dismiss new information that doesn’t fit with what they already believe. Tetlock found that his experts used a double standard: they were much tougher in assessing the validity of information that undercut their theory than they were in crediting information that supported it. The same deficiency leads liberals to read only The Nation and conservatives to read only National Review. We are not natural falsificationists: we would rather find more reasons for believing what we already believe than look for reasons that we might be wrong. In the terms of Karl Popper’s famous example, to verify our intuition that all swans are white we look for lots more white swans, when what we should really be looking for is one black swan.

Also, people tend to see the future as indeterminate and the past as inevitable. If you look backward, the dots that lead up to Hitler or the fall of the Soviet Union or the attacks on September 11th all connect. If you look forward, it’s just a random scatter of dots, many potential chains of causation leading to many possible outcomes. We have no idea today how tomorrow’s invasion of a foreign land is going to go; after the invasion, we can actually persuade ourselves that we knew all along. The result seems inevitable, and therefore predictable. Tetlock found that, consistent with this asymmetry, experts routinely misremembered the degree of probability they had assigned to an event after it came to pass. They claimed to have predicted what happened with a higher degree of certainty than, according to the record, they really did. When this was pointed out to them, by Tetlock’s researchers, they sometimes became defensive.

And, like most of us, experts violate a fundamental rule of probabilities by tending to find scenarios with more variables more likely. If a prediction needs two independent things to happen in order for it to be true, its probability is the product of the probability of each of the things it depends on. If there is a one-in-three chance of x and a one-in-four chance of y, the probability of both x and y occurring is one in twelve. But we often feel instinctively that if the two events “fit together” in some scenario the chance of both is greater, not less. The classic “Linda problem” is an analogous case. In this experiment, subjects are told, “Linda is thirty-one years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice and also participated in antinuclear demonstrations.” They are then asked to rank the probability of several possible descriptions of Linda today. Two of them are “bank teller” and “bank teller and active in the feminist movement.” People rank the second description higher than the first, even though, logically, its likelihood is smaller, because it requires two things to be true—that Linda is a bank teller and that Linda is an active feminist—rather than one.

 Plausible detail makes us believers. When subjects were given a choice between an insurance policy that covered hospitalization for any reason and a policy that covered hospitalization for all accidents and diseases, they were willing to pay a higher premium for the second policy, because the added detail gave them a more vivid picture of the circumstances in which it might be needed. In 1982, an experiment was done with professional forecasters and planners. One group was asked to assess the probability of “a complete suspension of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, sometime in 1983,” and another group was asked to assess the probability of “a Russian invasion of Poland, and a complete suspension of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, sometime in 1983.” The experts judged the second scenario more likely than the first, even though it required two separate events to occur. They were seduced by the detail.

It was no news to Tetlock, therefore, that experts got beaten by formulas. But he does believe that he discovered something about why some people make better forecasters than other people. It has to do not with what the experts believe but with the way they think. Tetlock uses Isaiah Berlin’s metaphor from Archilochus, from his essay on Tolstoy, “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” to illustrate the difference. He says:

 Low scorers look like hedgehogs: thinkers who “know one big thing,” aggressively extend the explanatory reach of that one big thing into new domains, display bristly impatience with those who “do not get it,” and express considerable confidence that they are already pretty proficient forecasters, at least in the long term. High scorers look like foxes: thinkers who know many small things (tricks of their trade), are skeptical of grand schemes, see explanation and prediction not as deductive exercises but rather as exercises in flexible “ad hocery” that require stitching together diverse sources of information, and are rather diffident about their own forecasting prowess.

 A hedgehog is a person who sees international affairs to be ultimately determined by a single bottom-line force: balance-of-power considerations, or the clash of civilizations, or globalization and the spread of free markets. A hedgehog is the kind of person who holds a great-man theory of history, according to which the Cold War does not end if there is no Ronald Reagan. Or he or she might adhere to the “actor-dispensability thesis,” according to which Soviet Communism was doomed no matter what. Whatever it is, the big idea, and that idea alone, dictates the probable outcome of events. For the hedgehog, therefore, predictions that fail are only “off on timing,” or are “almost right,” derailed by an unforeseeable accident. There are always little swerves in the short run, but the long run irons them out.

Foxes, on the other hand, don’t see a single determining explanation in history. They tend, Tetlock says, “to see the world as a shifting mixture of self-fulfilling and self-negating prophecies: self-fulfilling ones in which success breeds success, and failure, failure but only up to a point, and then self-negating prophecies kick in as people recognize that things have gone too far.”

 Tetlock did not find, in his sample, any significant correlation between how experts think and what their politics are. His hedgehogs were liberal as well as conservative, and the same with his foxes. (Hedgehogs were, of course, more likely to be extreme politically, whether rightist or leftist.) He also did not find that his foxes scored higher because they were more cautious—that their appreciation of complexity made them less likely to offer firm predictions. Unlike hedgehogs, who actually performed worse in areas in which they specialized, foxes enjoyed a modest benefit from expertise. Hedgehogs routinely over-predicted: twenty per cent of the outcomes that hedgehogs claimed were impossible or nearly impossible came to pass, versus ten per cent for the foxes. More than thirty per cent of the outcomes that hedgehogs thought were sure or near-sure did not, against twenty per cent for foxes.

 The upside of being a hedgehog, though, is that when you’re right you can be really and spectacularly right. Great scientists, for example, are often hedgehogs. They value parsimony, the simpler solution over the more complex. In world affairs, parsimony may be a liability—but, even there, there can be traps in the kind of highly integrative thinking that is characteristic of foxes. Elsewhere, Tetlock has published an analysis of the political reasoning of Winston Churchill. Churchill was not a man who let contradictory information interfere with his idées fixes. This led him to make the wrong prediction about Indian independence, which he opposed. But it led him to be right about Hitler. He was never distracted by the contingencies that might combine to make the elimination of Hitler unnecessary.

Tetlock also has an unscientific point to make, which is that “we as a society would be better off if participants in policy debates stated their beliefs in testable forms”—that is, as probabilities—“monitored their forecasting performance, and honored their reputational bets.” He thinks that we’re suffering from our primitive attraction to deterministic, overconfident hedgehogs. It’s true that the only thing the electronic media like better than a hedgehog is two hedgehogs who don’t agree. Tetlock notes, sadly, a point that Richard Posner has made about these kinds of public intellectuals, which is that most of them are dealing in “solidarity” goods, not “credence” goods. Their analyses and predictions are tailored to make their ideological brethren feel good—more white swans for the white-swan camp. A prediction, in this context, is just an exclamation point added to an analysis. Liberals want to hear that whatever conservatives are up to is bound to go badly; when the argument gets more nuanced, they change the channel. On radio and television and the editorial page, the line between expertise and advocacy is very blurry, and pundits behave exactly the way Tetlock says they will. Bush Administration loyalists say that their predictions about postwar Iraq were correct, just a little off on timing; pro-invasion liberals who are now trying to dissociate themselves from an adventure gone bad insist that though they may have sounded a false alarm, they erred “in the right direction”—not really a mistake at all.

The same blurring characterizes professional forecasters as well. The predictions on cable news commentary shows do not have life-and-death side effects, but the predictions of people in the C.I.A. and the Pentagon plainly do. It’s possible that the psychologists have something to teach those people, and, no doubt, psychologists are consulted. Still, the suggestion that we can improve expert judgment by applying the lessons of cognitive science and probability theory belongs to the abiding modern American faith in expertise. As a professional, Tetlock is, after all, an expert, and he would like to believe in expertise. So he is distressed that political forecasters turn out to be as unreliable as the psychological literature predicted, but heartened to think that there might be a way of raising the standard. The hope for a little more accountability is hard to dissent from. It would be nice if there were fewer partisans on television disguised as “analysts” and “experts” (and who would not want to see more foxes?). But the best lesson of Tetlock’s book may be the one that he seems most reluctant to draw: Think for yourself. ♦

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/05/051205crbo_books1?printable=true&currentPage=all#ixzz19t9qM9td

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