The Likely Reason Fields Planted With Monsanto's GMO Sugar Beets Were Torched

Just a few weeks ago we learned that Monsanto's gmo'ed wheat seeds miraculously returned to life, a full twelve years after a test planting in 16 states, including Oregon, afterwhich the GMO wheat seeds were 'wholly destroyed'. 

If you recall, Monsanto and its whor  excuse me, 'professors' claimed that the study involved" 'Very rigorous' protocols (that) controlled the work at agricultural research stations", and at the conclusion of the test planting:  
"GM seeds were burned, buried six feet underground or shipped back to Monsanto", said Oregon State University professor Robert Zemetra. Wide "no-plant" areas were maintained around test sites to prevent pollen movement from the GM wheat to other crops. Testing sites were checked two years after the trials for the presence of "volunteer" wheat plants that might have popped up."

The 'risen from the dead' GMO'ed wheat popping up thru the Earth came at a very inopportune time for Monsanto's operations on in Oregon. 

After years of fighting vocal opposition from neighboring organic and small family farmers, buying politicians with their lobbyists and burrowing their way into Oregon State University's crop sciences department; Monsanto finally swayed Oregon's Department of Agriculture this February into allowing GMO'ed canola seeds to be planted in the Wilamette Valley. (more Here)

But since the 'very rigorous protocols' and burning and burying of the wheat seeds and the 'wide no-plant areas' failed miserably to curb Monsanto's dainty and delicate wheat seeds from springing back to life, just last month the Oregon House passed a bill banning canola seeds from the Wilamette Valley for the next five years. Now it remains to be seen if the Senate will in turn approve the bill and pass it on to the governor for signing. (more Here)

Farmers as far away as Kansas are now suing Monsanto for potentially devaluing the wheat they grow and then sell to foreign markets, and an attempt is being made to combine the lawsuits into a Class Action suit. (more Here)

Lost Cree Lake, Jackson County

And now comes word that an 'arsonist(s)' has set alight Monsanto's sugar beet plants that were, until they were torched, growing in SW Oregon's Jackson County. Note it isn't a local arson squad going after the perpetrators, but rather Federal Agents. Is it a federal crime to burn a field of, let's say, corn? I know if someone sets my home alight not to expect agents to come running from D.C. to solve the crime. But again, we live in a fascist state where corporations run the government and we the idiots foot the bill. Just as curious, why is it that this 'crime' that reportedly took place in 'early June' is only being reported on now, nearly a month after the fact? (By the way, I don't know the answer to this question, yet)

Federal investigators are asking the public to help solve middle-of-the-night crimes that left ruined fields of genetically engineered sugar beets in rural Jackson County.

The crop destruction took place over the course of two separate nights in early June, when an unknown individual or group destroyed about 6,500 sugar beet plants genetically engineered to stand up to the herbicide Roundup on a pair of privately-owned plots of land leased and managed by Syngenta.

The first act of what the FBI considers "economic sabotage and a violation of federal law involving damage to commercial agricultural enterprises," took place during the night of June 8, when about 1,000 sugar beet plants on one property were destroyed. Three nights later, the destruction continued on another property, where another 5,500 plants were ruined. 

"It doesn't look like a vehicle was used. It looks like people entered the field and destroyed the plants by hand," said Paul Minehart, head of corporate communications in North America for Syngenta, a global agriculture corporation based in Basel, Switzerland.

Estimates for the damage were not specified but the financial losses are significant, according to FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele.

A group, Oregonians for Food and Shelter, is offering a reward up to $10,000 for information leading to the identification, arrest and conviction of the culprits. 

Oregon Department of Agriculture Director Katy Coba issued a statement about the sabotage.

“To my knowledge, this is the first time someone has deliberately taken the cowardly step of uprooting high value plants growing in our state. Regardless of how one feels about biotechnology, there is no justification for committing these crimes and it is not the kind of behavior we expect to see in Oregon agriculture,” Coba said.

More than decade ago, environmental saboteurs vandalized experimental crops across the country in a revolt against high-tech agriculture.

Foes of genetic engineering also struck in 2000, when members of the Earth Liberation Front, with roots in Oregon, set fire to agriculture offices at Michigan State University. ELF's position was that genetic engineering was "one of the many threats to the natural world as we know it."

Have information about the destruction? Ring the local offices of the FBI at (541) 773-2942 during normal business hours or call the FBI in Portland anytime at (503) 224-4181

A couple more questions. 

Why is a Swiss agricultural corporation (Syngenta is another of the very evil corporate entities that are thriving in these thoroughly judaified early days of the 21st century) growing Monsanto's crap in rural Oregon? 

And what is 'Oregonians for Food and Shelter'? Why are these Oregonians offering up $10K of their own money to find the heroes  oops - culprits - no ...  may we say .... 'terrorists' who set fire to freaky plants? And, why is setting fire to freaky plants a federal crime? And, just since I'm a bit stoned and in a quizative frame of mind right now, what is NOT a federal crime these days? (The last one's a question I've no hope of answering - not even the sychopath-in-charge, Eric Holder, can figure that one out). 

I'll not go into great detail here, but instead give you the broad overview of what Syngenta's all about. Formed 13 years ago, Syngenta has very close ties to Monsanto, and some of their business overlaps. According to wiki, Syngenta is a large global Swiss specialized chemicals company which markets seeds and pesticides. Syngenta is involved in biotechnology and genomic research. The company was ranked third in total seeds & biotech sales in 2009 in the commercial market.^[2]Sales in 2010 were approximately US$ 11.6 billion. Syngenta employs over 27,000 people in over 90 countries. Syngenta is listed on both the Swiss stock exchange and in New York. 

Syngenta is an amalgamation of Novartis and Zeneca. Novartis was formed when Geigy, Sandoz and Ciba merged at different times. Sandoz was the pharmacological lab that produced LSD, the drug our federal government was so eager to turn the world on to that they dosed the French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit one fine morning in 1951. The residents didn't seem to take too well to trippin' out - madness and death ensued and the outbreak was blamed on a local baker who must have baked a really funky batch of bread that early morning. I don't know what happened to the baker, but I can't imagine his business survived. Oh well.... have to break a few eggs and all that...

Oh, and why is this fine Swiss corporation growing these altered sugar beets in Oregon? Oh right - because it is against Swiss law to grow GMO crops on Swiss soil. 

And Oregonians for Food and Shelter? Aside from the fact that they came up with a goose-bump inducing name, OFFS really isn't about 'food and shelter' for the masses. Instead it represents corporate interests that just so happen to make a great deal of money cutting trees and growing crops and selling chemicals for business interests to spray on forests and farm and ranch lands. 

Here's their 2012 Board of Directors:

FORESTRY & WOOD PRODUCTS:

Eric Geyer, 2012 Chairman, Roseburg Forest Products

Jerry Anderson, Hancock Timber Resource Group

Luke Bergey, Miami Corporation

Ron Borisch, Longview Timber Corp.

Andy Bryant, Yamhill Environmental Services, Timber Division

Mike Fahey, Columbia Helicopters, Inc.

Jake Gibbs, Lone Rock Timber Management Company

David Hampton, Hampton Affiliates

Chris Jarmer, Oregon Forest Industries Council

Greg Miller, Weyerhaeuser Company

Ted Reiss, Seneca Jones Timber Company

AGRICULTURE & FOOD PROCESSORS:

Mark Dunn, 2012 Vice Chair J.R. Simplot Company

Barry Bushue, Oregon Farm Bureau

Jean Godfrey, Columbia Gorge Fruit Growers

Mike Iverson, Oregon Fresh Market Growers Association

Rick Jacobson, NORPAC Foods, Inc.

Jerry Marguth, Oregon Seed Council

Blake Rowe, Oregon Wheat Growers League

Carol Russell, Russell Cranberry Company

Craig Smith, Northwest Food Processors Association

Currently vacant Oregon Association of Nurseries

CHEMICAL, PROFESSIONAL APPLICATORS, ROW:

Doug Hoffman, 2012 Secretary WILCO – Winfield, LLC

Bruce Alber, Past Chair Wilbur-Ellis Company

Curt Dannen, Crop Production Services, Inc.

Mike Diamond, Monsanto Company

Debbie Ego, Rasmussen Spray Service

Danelle Farmer, Syngenta Crop Protection

Cindy Finlayson, Umatilla Electric Cooperative, Inc.

Jim Fitzgerald, Far West AgriBusiness Association

Jerry Harchenko, Pacific NW Aerial Applicators Alliance

Brendan McCarthy, Portland General Electric

Kent Pittard, DuPont

April Snell, Oregon Water Resources Congress

Bryan Stuart, Western Regional Alliance

Andrea Vogt, RISE

All those big names, I'd expect more than a measly $10K reward. Some of these old families have more than $10K in change lost under their couch cushions. 

But the real rub is this:

Syngenta and other growers of Sugar Beets in Southern Oregon are breaking laws and, so far, are not being held accountable: 

Biotech company violated USDA isolation requirements for GM sugar beet crops in Southern Oregon; USDA does nothing

Residents of Jackson County, Oregon have organized an initiative to ban the production of genetically modified plants in the county. Organizers of GMO-Free Jackson County have submitted a county ordinance and are collecting signatures with the aim of putting the initiative on the ballot for an election in 2013 or 2014. The initiative was launched in response to concerns that seeds for genetically modified Roundup Ready sugar beets were being grown in close proximity—and illegally—to producers of organic crops.

Illegal plantings all over the Rogue Valley

Last February, Chris Hardy, owner of Village Farm in Ashland, Oregon, discovered that a neighbor was growing GM sugar beet seeds just one-quarter of a mile from his small organic farm in Ashland, Oregon.
The neighbor was growing the beets under contract with biotechnology company Syngenta for seed production.
The problem was that his neighbor’s GM sugar beet plants could cross pollinate with—and contaminate—Hardy’s chard and table beet plants, ruining their organic status.
“I told him ‘are you serious?’” Hardy said. “I thought this was outrageous.”
Another even bigger problem was that the GM plantings violated US Department of Agriculture requirements, which call for a 4-mile separation distance between GM beets and other Beta seeds, which includes Swiss chard and table beets. From February 2011 until July 2012, GM sugar beets were partially deregulated by USDA and subject to the 4-mile separation distance.
Hardy contacted Syngenta about the violation and a company representative told him that there were other GM beet seed production fields throughout the Rogue Valley in Southern Oregon.
“He said there was a checkerboard of fields ranging in size from one-quarter to 10 acres being grown from South Ashland up to Grants Pass, a distance of about 25 miles,” Hardy said.
Hardy also contacted the USDA’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service about Syngenta’s violation of the 4-mile buffer. The agency sent out an inspector who interviewed Hardy and several other farmers, but nothing resulted from it.
“Syngenta was very cavalier, hopscotching all over the valley,” said Brian Comnes, a retired computer project manager in Ashland and one of the organizers of the GMO-free initiative.
Another organic farmer, Steve Fry, owner of Fry Family Farms in Medford, was forced to destroy a chard crop because he found that a neighbor was growing GM sugar beets 400 yards from his farm. Fry was growing the chard for seed but his customer refused to buy the seed because he was concerned it had been contaminated by the GM beets.
“I can’t grow chard seed because the Syngenta guy is down the street,” Fry said. “Once GMOs are in town, everyone has to go away.”

Collecting signatures to put GMO ban on ballot

Following the discovery of the GM beets, Hardy called a meeting of farmers and citizens in Jackson County to alert them, and they organized GMO-Free Jackson County. In May, the group filed a proposed county ordinance that would make it illegal to grow GM plants in the county.
According to Comnes, the group has already collected the required 4662 signatures to get the ordinance on the ballot, but they aim to get more in case some signatures aren’t valid.
“We’d like to get 6500 by December 8 (the deadline to qualify for the next county election),” Comnes said, noting that the Ashland City Council also backs the initiative.
If they achieve that goal, Ordinance No. 635 would appear on the ballot for the next county election, which could be as early as March 2013 or as late as May 2014. If Jackson County voters pass the initiative, the ordinance would become law a year later, meaning it may not take effect until 2015.
Until then, Hardy says it’s a “crapshoot” for Rogue Valley farmers to grow organic chard and table beets because of the GMO contamination threat.
On top of that, in July USDA-APHIS completely deregulated GM sugar beets so the 4-mile isolation distance to protect chard and table beets is no longer a requirement.
If Jackson County voters pass Ordinance No. 635, the county would become the third in the US to pass a GMO ban, following Mendocino and Marin counties in California who passed similar laws in 2004.

- See more at: http://www.non-gmoreport.com/articles/november2012/illegalgmsugarbeetsoregon.php#sthash.hx5HghHv.dpuf

I did check, but so far I can find no evidence that our heroes at Oregonians for Food and Shelter have ponied up a $10K reward for information leading to the prosecution of Syngenta.... but now you know why hero(es) burned those god damned gmo'ed sugar beets in the first place. 

Unfortunately, though not surprisingly, the FBI hasn't yet published a toll-free number for folks to call to report GMO'ed crops being grown illegally in Oregon or any other American State. Perhaps they simply don't have the funds or manpower for such a costly and encompassing investigation... 

Buried History, Part II

NAFTA (or North American Free Trade Agreement) created the climate where many Mexican Nationals, Central and even Southern Americans have no choice but to come North, to Gringo-land, in order to secure some sort of future for themselves and their family.

Smiles all around as they're thinking of the orphanage they'll soon visit for a private 'fun d raiser'

Comin' or Goin'?

One simple example: In the Veracruz region of Mexico, prior to NAFTA, many families were in the business of raising, slaughtering, and selling pigs. The area's proximity to Mexico City allowed families to provide for themselves on small family owned plots of land by helping to feed the largest city in North America. 

A typical Mexican family farm. Some Maize, a few cattle, a good dog.  A few chickens and swine not shown (but members of Congress were unable to make it for the photo shoot)

 Then came Smithfield Farms and NAFTA: "In 1993 Carroll Foods, a giant hog-raising corporation, partnered with a Mexican agribusiness enterprise to set up a huge pig farm known as Granjas Carroll de Mexico (GCM) in Veracruz’s Perote Valley. Smithfield, which had a longtime partnership with Carroll Foods, bought the company out in 1999.  By 2008  the Perote operation was sending close to a million pigs to slaughter every year—85 percent to Mexico City and the rest to surrounding Mexican states. Because of its location in the mountains above the city of Veracruz, Mexico’s largest port, the operation could easily receive imported corn for feed, which makes up two-thirds of the cost of raising hogs. NAFTA lifted the barriers on Smithfield’s ability to import feed. This gave it an enormous advantage over Mexican producers, as US corn, heavily subsidized by US farm bills, was much cheaper. “After NAFTA,” says Timothy Wise, of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, US corn “was priced 19 percent below the cost of production.”

Bargain 'Holiday Hams' by Smithfield

But Smithfield didn’t just import feed into Mexico. NAFTA allowed it to import pork as well.

According to Alejandro Ramírez, general director of the Confederation of Mexican Pork Producers, Mexico imported 30,000 tons of pork in 1995, the year after NAFTA took effect. By 2010 pork imports, almost all from the United States, had grown more than twenty-five times, to 811,000 tons. As a result, pork prices received by Mexican producers dropped 56 percent. US pork exports are dominated by the largest companies. Wise estimates that Smithfield’s share of this export market is significantly greater than its 27 percent share of US production.

Imported pork had a dramatic effect on Mexican jobs. “We lost 4,000 pig farms,” Ramírez estimates, based on reports received by the confederation from its members. “On Mexican farms, each 100 animals produce five jobs, so we lost 20,000 farm jobs directly from imports. Counting the five indirect jobs dependent on each direct job, we lost over 120,000 jobs in total.”

In a 2005 study for the Mexican government, the World Bank found that the extreme rural poverty rate of 35 percent in 1992–94, before NAFTA, jumped to 55 percent in 1996–98, after NAFTA took effect. This could be explained, the report said, “mainly by the 1995 economic crisis, the sluggish performance of agriculture, stagnant rural wages, and falling real agricultural prices.”

By 2010, according to the Monterrey Institute of Technology, 53 million Mexicans were living in poverty—half the country’s population. About 20 percent live in extreme poverty, almost all in rural areas.

The growth of poverty, in turn, fueled migration. In 1990, 4.5 million Mexican-born people lived in the United States. A decade later, that population had more than doubled to 9.75 million, and in 2008 it peaked at 12.67 million. About 5.7 million were able to get some kind of visa; another 7 million couldn’t but came nevertheless.

Simultaneous changes in the United States also accelerated migration. The Immigration Reform and Control Act, passed by Congress in 1986, expanded the existing H2-A visa program, creating the current H2-A program, which allows US agricultural employers to bring in workers from Mexico and other countries, giving them temporary visas tied to employment contracts. 

It's one of those 'coincidences' I'm sure, but first Congress (the body many Americans still trust represents their interests) passed laws opening up migration to foreigners who were allowed to stay in the US as long as employed. This allowed some corporations to eliminate union wage and benefit positions and later reconstitute and fill those same positions paying these immigrants a fraction of the previous wage and with few or even none of the benefits previously afforded. 

Shortly thereafter Congress changed the immigration law, Carroll/Smithfield move operations into Mexico and, in another coincidence, soon thereafter NAFTA was passed. (By both republicans and democrats - it's when they have bi-partisan support for an issue or bill that you really know you're gonna be screwed.) Smithfield was able to both export subsidized corn (subsidized means: partially paid for with your tax dollars) into Mexico to feed its pigs and produce the 'Other White Meat' below cost, thereby driving the small family farmer in Mexico out of business and leaving the young men and women with no choice but to set off for America (usually entering illegally) and then going to work at Smithfield's N Carolina facilities and of course this (and other) mass migration further inflamed the American people against both political parties causing them to march on Washington and, while shouting 'General Sherman burned the wrong city!' set DC aflame, driving all politicians and lobbyists and intelligence officers into the Atlantic where a gigantic once in a century storm was raging and sucked them all below water, never to be heard from again! no, that wasn't it... rather the immigration inflamed the American people against the damn illegals who continued pouring into America because they want to steal our jobs! Misplaced anger as the American people were LED by the media and their favorite politicians into believing hoards came here just to screw Gringo and Negro out of a job, when in fact, Gringo and Negro's supposed government, hand in hand with Ottawa and Mexico City, wrote and signed into law legislation and agreements that not only made immigration possible, but a forgone conclusion! 

So what happened when the children of Veracruz moved North?

As unrest grew in Veracruz, it was also growing among the company’s workers in North Carolina. When the Tar Heel slaughterhouse opened in 1992, its labor force was made up mostly of African-Americans and local Lumbee Native Americans. Many objected to the high line speed and the injuries that proliferated as a result. The plant kills and dismembers 32,000 hogs every day. People stand very close together as animal carcasses speed by. They wield extremely sharp knives, slicing through sinews and bone in the same motion, hundreds of times each hour. Repetitive stress and other injuries are endemic to meatpacking, and the faster the line runs, the more injuries there are.

The workers’ frustration with the low wages and brutal working conditions produced one of the longest and bitterest fights to organize a union in modern US labor history. In 1994 and 1997 the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) lost two union representation elections. The 1997 election was thrown out by the labor board, but an administrative law judge ruled that in both, Smithfield “engaged in egregious and pervasive unfair labor practices and objectionable conduct.” In 1997 police in riot gear lined the walkway into the plant, and workers had to file past them to cast their ballots. At the end of the vote count, union organizer Ray Shawn was beaten up. Security chief Danny Priest and the other guards were later deputized, and Smithfield maintained a holding cell in a trailer on the property, which workers called the company jail.

Soon to visit the 'company jail'

Even by standards in North Carolina, where union membership and wages are low, Smithfield’s pay scale and reputation for injuries made it hard for the company to attract local workers. In the mid-’90s, Mexicans pushed by the effects of NAFTA to leave the Veracruz countryside began arriving in North Carolina and going to work at the Tar Heel slaughterhouse. All over Veracruz, meatpacking companies were recruiting them, according to Carolina Ramirez. “There were recruiters in many Veracruz towns,” she remembers. “There were even vans stationed in different places, and a whole system in which people were promised jobs in the packing plants. It was an open secret.” Richards, the Smithfield spokeswoman, denied that the company recruited workers in Mexico. “With one exception [a management trainee program], Smithfield Foods does not travel to, nor advertise in, other countries or outside of our local communities to actively recruit employees for our various facilities around the country,” she said.

Roberto Ortega remembers that there were hundreds of people from Veracruz in the Tar Heel plant when he worked there in the late ’90s and early 2000s. “Almost the whole town [of Las Choapas] is here,” he says. “Some are supervisors and mayordomos, and they bring people from the town.”

NAFTA (among other evils) has decimated family farms and family businesses in both the USA and Mexico. 

Now, all this illegal immigration coupled with the '9/11 tragedy' where some cavemen spent a couple months learning to pilot single-engine Cessna's and used their new-found knowledge and some really sharp box cutters to pilot 4 jumbo jets into 3 buildings and a field; really got the patriotic flag waving Fox watching Limbo listening right-wingers into a tizzy. Something just had to be done! "Militarize the borders!

 We need Homeland Security! Strip search my neighbor at the airport!"  Our government, always eager to please, burned the midnight oil writing the Patriot Act which was miraculously completed prior to 9/11!!! (we really have the best government here in the USA!) 

The Miracle created Homeland Security and re-enforced cockpit doors and made little old ladies strip down to their girdles before boarding aircraft and best of all, militarized our borders!

And this folks, is where we are today in this psychotic reservation we call the USofA:

I really feel good seeing our agents ride about with little American flags on the rear of their  4 wheelers

Oops. That's the Berlin Wall! An evil, commie wall! I should know better than to associate that with patriotic American walls... Sorry.

That's the wrong message. Hopefully this farming family has been properly investigated by the Border Patrol, IRS and Homeland Security agencies.  These people make me nervous. Get with the program!! Love it or leave it!

Sorry pal, but you have it backasswards... Your sign should read: Ban Public Ownership of Military Weapons. Why anyone wants to put lethal weapons in the hands of the nutjobs is beyond me. 

And that, my friends, is how the 2 party system works in the USA. Don't think it would matter 

if we had 3 parties (just look at Britain). We could have 100 major parties and have the same 

results. Fact is, all the jackasses you voted for, whether Repub or Demo or Independent or 

Green martians (nearly) all work for the same end - some are so stupid that I'd bet they don't

know it themselves. 

Problem: Reaction: Solution.

They made the problem (massive illegal immigration caused by their actions) 

 The reaction was, as always, orchestrated by the media, in 

this case the 'conservative' (Fox, Limbo, the Savage Weiner 

etc) which demanded : (militarize the 

borders!) and now are ready to implement the solution: "Path to citizenship". I wonder how

the Tea Partiers and bigtits Palin will react to that!  Actually I know. It will be blamed on the 

'Rhino' republicans and those damn democrats. 


More important is this: We are all in the same boat: Mexican, Peruvian, Brazilian, Canadian; 

ditto every black man, yellow man, red man and white man. There are many in this 

movement who want their specific race to be 'special'.  "The Celts are the best and we 

need to throw the rest out along with the Jews! No, it is the Germanic people who's best!  No, 

all Saxons!! 

Please. The jewish con worked just as well on my Irish brothers as it did on your English 

cousins and the Mexican who was forced to immigrate or starve to death.  WE ALL HAVE 

A COMMON ENEMY AND THAT ENEMY IS NOT EACH OTHER! The enemy of all 

things good and noble is the jew. Our grandfathers ceded a great deal of ground to the 

enemy. We need to gain at least a portion of that ground back during our lifetime.  We can 

have much greater success united than divided as the jew wants us to live and fight.

Not sure of what I say?  Ask yourself a simple 

question: Would the jew rather we (all races) be united against our common enemy, or rather we fight amongst ourselves? 

Recognize the enemy. Then work with likeminded men to defeat him. That's what's important. 

Oh, and enjoy your Easter Ham. (Just don't bother visiting 

and reading the second link, unless you're having Roast Beef):

Thanks to the Nation magazine for the quotes in blue above.  Link to the aricle is here
.
Thanks to Jeff Tietz and Rolling Stone Magazine and Michel Chossudovsky for background

(and the one link you really ought to ignore..)