HIS IS JIM HIGHTOWER SAYING ....
GET A WHIFF OF THE MAI
Heeeere they come again: that cabal of govern-ment ignorance and corporate
arrogance that brought us NAFTA, GATT and the WTO.
This time, their arcane acronym is MAI-Multilateral Agreement on Investments,
and this one is by far the stinkiest skunk they've turned loose on us yet.
My God, wait til you get a whiff of this! The intent of the MAI treaty is
nothing less than to enthrone global corporations as our rulers, giving
them powers that people are not allowed, including the power to overrule
our local laws and to override our nation's economic policies. Indeed, the
secretary general of the WTO gleefully described this malicious treaty as
[quote] "the constitution of a single global economy."
Say that, when your city government makes purchases, it chooses to give
a preference to "Made-in-the-USA" products. Uh-uh. The MAI outlaws
such preferences.
Say that Congress decides to limit the percentage of ownership that foreign
corporations and investors can control in such essential U.S. industries
as aerospace and energy. No way. Illegal under MAI.
Say we choose to keep foreign corporations from getting Amerp;ica's
irrigation water or government research. No can do under MAI. Not only does
this odious treaty undercut our local, state and national sovereignty, but
it empowers the global corporations to sue our government directly-a power
that us ordinary citizens don't even have. Plus, MAI lets corporations bypass
our court system and take their case directly to special international tribunals.
You've heard practically nothing about the MAI until now because it's been
negotiated in secrecy, in a basement office in France. But we're onto them,
and they can't keep this stinker a secret anymore. They can put a skunk
in the basement . . . but they can't hide the smell.
USDA'S UNNATURAL "ORGANIC" LABEL
Organic food has moved from the fringes of the food economy into the mainstream,
with sales now reaching $3.5 billion a year and consumer demand outstripping
supply.
A problem, though, is that anyone with a load of tomatoes has been able
to slap a label on them and call them "organic," even when they're
not. But now there's good news - a set of standards has been drawn-up to
define what's organic and what's not, and a new national label will tell
us consumers which is which.
Unfortunately, there's bad news, too: the U.S. Department of Agriculture
did the defining. USDA, long a captive of giant agribusiness and chemical
companies, took seven years to come up with its new standards, which fill
600 pages. Yet this new document is more notable for what is not in it than
what is.
While the agency properly required that no pesticides, hormones or synthetic
fertilizers be used in producing foods labeled organic, it deliberately
avoided prohibiting certain high-tech, factory-farming practices that the
agribusiness giants want to use. These are practices that you would hardly
consider "organic," since they mess with mother nature-and our
food-in most unnatural ways. For example, genetic engineering. Under USDA's
proposal, man-made edibles with a genetic make-up that has been altered,
spliced and otherwise manipulated in the lab still could get that "organic"
label.
So could irradiated food-meat, veggies and other items that are zapped with
radiation from nuclear waste, a process that changes the very DNA of the
food product. Likewise, cow cannibalism would be allowed - the practice
of feeding waste cow parts back to cows, which are vegetarians in nature,
never eating meat.
To stop these perversions of the organic label, call S.O.S.-a citizens group
fighting to Save Organic Standards: (218) 226-4164.
USDA'S UNNATURAL "ORGANIC" LABEL
Organic food has moved from the fringes of the food economy into the mainstream,
with sales now reaching $3.5 billion a year and consumer demand outstripping
supply.
A problem, though, is that anyone with a load of tomatoes has been able
to slap a label on them and call them "organic," even when they're
not. But now there's good news - a set of standards has been drawn-up to
define what's organic and what's not, and a new national label will tell
us consumers which is which.
Unfortunately, there's bad news, too: the U.S. Department of Agriculture
did the defining. USDA, long a captive of giant agribusiness and chemical
companies, took seven years to come up with its new standards, which fill
600 pages. Yet this new document is more notable for what is not in it than
what is.
While the agency properly required that no pesticides, hormones or synthetic
fertilizers be used in producing foods labeled organic, it deliberately
avoided prohibiting certain high-tech, factory-farming practices that the
agribusiness giants want to use. These are practices that you would hardly
consider "organic," since they mess with mother nature-and our
food-in most unnatural ways. For example, genetic engineering. Under USDA's
proposal, man-made edibles with a genetic make-up that has been altered,
spliced and otherwise manipulated in the lab still could get that "organic"
label.
So could irradiated food-meat, veggies and other items that are zapped with
radiation from nuclear waste, a process that changes the very DNA of the
food product. Likewise, cow cannibalism would be allowed - the practice
of feeding waste cow parts back to cows, which are vegetarians in nature,
never eating meat.
To stop these perversions of the organic label, call S.O.S.-a citizens group
fighting to Save Organic Standards: (218) 226-4164.
A SURPRISE IN YOUR DINNER: "TRANSGENICS"
What's for dinner?" is no longer the relevant question. "What's
in dinner?" is a much more important question.
In addition to old-fashioned, cyclospora and salmonella, there are virulent,
new, mutant bacteria like E.Coli 0157:H7, not to mention the unknown and
untreatable prions that cause Mad Cow Disease.
As if this is not plenty to have on our plates, along come the corporate
food technologists to add some nasty surprises to our daily rations. These
engineers are taking the DNA from one organism and inserting it into another.
The result is altered organisms that these Dr. Frankensteins call "Transgenics."
Transgenics are already in the supermarkets. Among the genetically engineered
food you might be serving to your family tonight are tomatoes, corn, salmon,
potatoes, cheese products and soy products.
I say "might be serving" because there's no way for you to know.
Our government "watchdogs" have allowed Monsanto and other corporate
manipulators to mess with the DNA of dinner without bothering to tell us.
The altered products do not even have to be labelled!
Does it matter? Is a pig's butt pork? If you have a serious food allergy,
eating the tampered bag of Fritos could kill you. The FDA says transgenics
are safe, but-get this-there have been NO HUMAN TESTS! These corporate technologists
are making foods never before eaten by humans-we are their guinea pigs!
Even your baby might be part of their genetic experiments. The New York
Times commissioned a test of soy-based baby formulas and found that Alsoy,
Similac, Neocare, Isomil and Enfamil all contained genetically-altered soy
ingredients-which are going right into your babies.
If you think it's time to require all transgenics to be clearly labeled,
call Mothers For Natural Law at (515) 472-2809.
UNREGULATED EXPERIMENTS ON HUMANS
As Native-American ac-tivist Vine Deloria said: "Sure you can trust
the government. Ask an Indian."
From Agent Orange to Gulf War syndrome, from DDT to Mad Cow disease, we've
learned the hard way that our watchdog agencies often turn out to be lapdogs,
protecting higher-ups or the industries they supposedly are overseeing.
For example, medical experimentation on humans. That's highly-regulated,
right? After all that publicity about the dastardly "Tuskegee Study"
on African-American Men, the exposure of soldiers and civilians to Atomic
blasts, those radiation experiments on indigent hospital patients - didn't
congress put a halt to treating us humans like lab rats?
Sorry, Little Nellie Sunshine, they did not. Our lawmakers did pass a law
in 1974, but they left loopholes big enough for Dr. Frankenstein to drive
through. For example, they exempted most of the human studies financed by
private companies. So, American men, women and children today are being
subjected to medical experiments that are totally unregulated. The regulatory
authorities do not know how many of these experiments are underway, what
is being done to the unsuspecting patients or what happens to them. When
there is a complaint, the government has no authority to investigate, much
less to punish.
Instead of having to get a government OK to conduct, say, a test of a new
drug on a group of children, the drug company researcher can set-up its
own ethical review board to approve the ethics of its own experiments.
Guinea Pigs of the World, unite! Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut is
considering legislation to close these loopholes on human experimentation.
To support the effort, call his office on (202) 225-5541.
"GREEN" FRONT GROUPS
Whether he meant to or not, Kermit the Frog spoke for all environmentalists
when he noted: "It's not easy being green."
And according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal, it's not even
easy to know who really is green, since some of the nastiest, butt-ugliest,
most ANTI-environmental interests have created front groups with names that
make them appear to be totally green and 100 percent ecologically pure.
For example, the "Environmental Conservation Organization" -ECO
for short-is really a group of land developers. And guess who puts out the
newsletter "GreenSpeak," on cream-colored, recycled paper no less?
The Hardwood Lumber Association, that's who-lobbying for public subsidies
to help them cut down more timber from our national forests.
Then there's The National Wilderness Institute, another sneaky outfit. It
uses a logo with the shadow of a howling wolf against the full moon. But
the Institute actually is a lobby front trying to gut the Endangered Species
Act-a law that protects wolves.
My favorite artful dodger, though, is the Abundant Wildlife Society. No,
this is not a touchie-feelie group trying to protect Bambi, but a hunter's
lobbying organization that wants to exterminate wolves and other predators
of such wild game as deer and elk. Not that they love deer and elk, mind
you -they just think these wild critters ought to be left for human hunters
to kill, not wolves.
These name games would just be silly, except that these industry fronts
are swarming all over Washington giving Newt Gingrich and his anti-environmental
Congress a "green cover" for gutting America's environmental protections.
This is Jim Hightower saying, Don't be fooled by their cover. No matter
how "green" they seem, it's like putting lipstick on a pig . .
. they still can't hide their ugliness.
Contact us directly at: hightower@essential.org
Copyright 1997 - Hightower and Associates, Inc.
Spring 1998-- N.C.Xpress
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