Tuesday, April 14, 2015

All Monsanto’s Men Part IV: The Prophecy - Monsanto Sues God Over Water Rights



Fresh off their latest lawsuit victory claiming proprietary property rights over seeds, Monsanto has set their sights on property rights to the world’s fresh water supply.  Just last year, the Russia Times reported:  


Excerpt:


Supreme Court hands Monsanto victory over farmers on GMO seed patents, ability to sue


The US Supreme Court upheld biotech giant Monsanto’s claims on genetically-engineered seed patents and the company’s ability to sue farmers whose fields are inadvertently contaminated with Monsanto materials….


“If Monsanto can patent seeds for financial gain, they should be forced to pay for contaminating a farmer’s field, not be allowed to sue them,” said Dave Murphy, founder and executive director of Food Democracy Now!, in a statement “Once again, America’s farmers have been denied justice, while Monsanto’s reign of intimidation is allowed to continue in rural America.”


“Monsanto has effectively gotten away with stealing the world’s seed heritage and abusing farmers for the flawed nature of their patented seed technology,” said Murphy. “This is an outrage of historic proportions and will not stand.”


The new American government that took power after the 2000 Senate/Supreme Court coup has morphed into something out of the 1970’s film The Prophecy, an ecological fable about the evils of industrial pollution.  But The Prophecy is no longer is a fable in America and the world, but a fact of everyday life. 


Democracy died in America on December 12, 2000 and corporate fascism was unleashed.  Elections in America do not result in the will of the people prevailing according to Ellen Brown at Web of Debt:

Excerpt:


The Magna Carta, considered the first Bill of Rights in the Western world, established the rights of nobles as against the king. But the doctrine that “all men are created equal” – that all people have “certain inalienable rights,” including “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” – is an American original.


And those rights, supposedly insured by the Bill of Rights, have the right to vote at their core. We have the right to vote but the voters’ collective will no longer prevails.


The judicial system in America after the 2000 coup is a fascist, corporate dream that has allowed Corporations to gain complete control over every facet of government policy, foreign and domestic. 


Take Florida, the “scene of the crime of the century.”  In 2000, immediately after the United States Court, overturned the ruling of the Florida State Supreme Court and ordered the recount to be stopped and awarded his brother, George W. with the Presidency, Jeb Bush handed Florida’s State pension funds to W’s donors.  From International Business Times:



Excerpt:


Jeb Bush's Administration Steered Florida Pension Money to George W. Bush’s Fundraisers


Four years before the financial collapse, Goldman Sachs executive George Herbert Walker IV had much to be thankful for. "I've been fortunate to be a small part of teams leading U.S. restructurings, European privatizations, global pension management and now hedge fund and private equity investing,” he said in the annual report of a banking colossus that would soon be known as the “great vampire squid” of Wall Street…


At the same time he was raising $100,000 for his cousin George W. Bush’s successful presidential re-election effort, the administration of another cousin, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, returned the family favor, delivering $150 million of Florida pension money to an alternative investment fund run by Walker’s firm. 


As Jeb Bush oversaw the State Board of Administration (SBA) that runs Florida’s massive public pension system, the state shifted billions of dollars into higher-risk, higher-fee alternative investments, benefiting the same sector of the investment industry he would work in upon leaving office.


Along with the pension funds of the people of Florida, came the water resources for sale to the highest bidder.  Among the highest bidders are the Bush Family, Monsanto, the Koch Brothers and T. Boone Pickens.  From Global Research:




Excerpt:


The New “Water Barons”: Wall Street Mega-Banks are Buying up the World’s Water


A disturbing trend in the water sector is accelerating worldwide. The new “water barons” — the Wall Street banks and elitist multibillionaires — are buying up water all over the world at unprecedented pace.


Familiar mega-banks and investing powerhouses such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Macquarie Bank, Barclays Bank, the Blackstone Group, Allianz, and HSBC Bank, among others, are consolidating their control over water.


Wealthy tycoons such as T. Boone Pickens, former President George H.W. Bush and his family, Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing, Philippines’ Manuel V. Pangilinan and other Filipino billionaires, and others are also buying thousands of acres of land with aquifers, lakes, water rights, water utilities, and shares in water engineering and technology companies all over the world.


One of the pioneers that championed the overthrow of the American government that opened up the Everglades to billionaire polluters was Congressman “Sugar Daddy” Clay Shaw.  From CounterPunch




Excerpt:


Shaw served 26 years in Congress, at a time when the GOP perfected polarization tactics as well as any southern Democrat. It is not enough to note, in passing, a Republican leader who stood up for protecting one of the most threatened ecosystems in the United States. 


How Clay Shaw was a friend of the Everglades deserves a closer reading and involves the story of a Republican who braved dissent of the Jeb Bush orthodoxy at the time and in a state that determined the outcome of the most contested presidential election in US history…


Scarcely six months earlier, ON THE SAME DAY THE US SUPREME COURT DECIDED IN FAVOR OF GEORGE W. BUSH, Jeb signed with President Bill Clinton in the Rose Garden the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Bill….


Governor Bush attempted a significant re-write of Florida water quality law. In April 2001, Sierra Club issued a state-wide alarm: “The Florida Legislature is now considering a law that would eliminate the standards for total coliform and other biological and chemical contaminants in our underground drinking water supply when water is pumped down from the surface. Our drinking water supply, the Florida Aquifer, would become a septic tank….”


On May 20. 2003 Gov. Jeb Bush brushed off the federal judiciary and signed the Everglades bill into law. He also spurned a massive outcry by civic leaders, environmentalists and every newspaper editorial board in the state. 



Along with the installation of George W. Bush as President of the United States came a spate of laws and presidential orders weakening environmental laws, particularly the Halliburton Loophole.  From FrackWire:

Excerpt:


The “Halliburton Loophole” refers to legislation introduced in the 2005 Energy Policy Act that exempts hydraulic fracturing and oil and gas drilling from certain sections of the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 and the Clean Water Act of 1972.  As such, the Halliburton Loophole legislation represents a significant reduction in federal oversight of drilling and fracking operations…


The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) was implemented in 1974 with the goal of preserving the purity and safety of the limited supply of potable water in the United States. 


The purpose of the Clean Water Act was to “preserve the purity and safety” of the LIMITED supply of potable water in America.  But that was the old America, in the new America poisoning the water is an “opportunity” for an entrepreneur. 


So how did that work out for Florida?  Fast forward to the year 2015.  According to Daily Kos:


Excerpt:


EXCLUSIVE - Koch Brothers, Rick Scott And Jeb Bush Exposed In Florida Pipeline Scandal


Tons of toxic waste is being dumped into St. Johns River, daily, by the Koch Brothers company, Georgia-Pacific. Aspects of the deal allowing Georgia Pacific to massively assault the environment, were misleading, sometimes illegal, and unbeknownst to the local citizens. Florida Governor Rick Scott and former Governor (and Republican presidential hopeful), Jeb Bush, are also involved….


These actions in turn reach back into the Jeb Bush administration (1999-2007), when then Governor Bush and the Florida Cabinet, over the objection of then Attorney General Charlie Crist, gave preliminary approval for a Georgia-Pacific pipeline from its Palatka paper mill to the St. Johns River…


Tons of toxic waste travel through the pipe to the heart of the St. Johns River every day. The approval was “finalized” through what Florida citizens and environmental groups are calling a grossly misleading newspaper public notice that aimed to cut-off public challenges to the pipeline easement, which the Trustees’ agent, the FDEP, eventually granted.


Another result of the 2000 election heist in Florida is sink holes across the world.  People are losing homes, cars, roads, their lives from sinkholes.  From the End of American Dream:


Excerpt:


In a previous article about sinkholes, I talked about a sinkhole that recently formed in Ohio that was the size of four football fields and that was more than 30 feet deep.  It caused part of State Route 516 to collapse and authorities were projecting that the road would continue to stay closed for months to come…


The giant Louisiana sinkhole in Assumption Parish that made headlines all over the nation last year is now more than 800 feet in diameter.  It just continues to grow, and authorities have no idea when it will stop growing….


Just recently, large sinkholes forced roads to close in New Jersey and in Arizona.  Of course those incidents will soon be forgotten because there are more news stories about major sinkholes in the United States almost every single day now.  Giant sinkholes have been happening with such regularity that people hardly take notice anymore.


And it’s not just Florida’s aquifers that have been awarded to Bush pioneers, but aquifers across the US have chemical wastewater from “frack” mines pumped directly into their aquifers with abandon, like in California.  From Desmogblog:


Excerpt:


After California state regulators shut down 11 fracking wastewater injection wells last July over concerns that the wastewater might have contaminated aquifers used for drinking water and farm irrigation, the EPA ordered a report within 60 days.


It was revealed yesterday that the California State Water Resources Board has sent a letter to the EPA confirming that at least nine of those sites were in fact dumping wastewater contaminated with fracking fluids and other pollutants into aquifers ….


Fracking has been accused of exacerbating California's epic state-wide drought, but the Central Valley region, which has some of the worst air and water pollution in the state, has borne a disproportionate amount of the impacts from oil companies' increasing use of the controversial oil extraction technique.


News of billions of gallons of fracking wastewater contaminating protected aquifers relied on by residents of the Central Valley for drinking water could not have come at a worse time.


And Pioneer, T. Boone Pickens is just one billionaire tycoon who makes huge profits from destroying the water in the United States while being protected by the politicians they installed in office.  There’s the Koch Brothers coal ash repurposing scam.  That is, repurposing the highly toxic coal ash into materials used in road construction. Voila, lemonade, from Earth Justice.


Excerpt:


Clean Wisconsin’s new report, Don’t Drink the Water, demonstrates that coal ash reuse may pose significant public health threats. Today’s report highlights the risks to residents of southeast Wisconsin, where more than one million tons of toxic coal ash has been used in building projects near drinking water wells. The report documents how dangerous chemicals have made their way into the drinking water of hundreds of Wisconsin citizens….


Use of coal ash as construction fill has caused water contamination at sites across the nation. Each year, more than 20 million tons of coal ash are placed as fill without adequate safeguards to prevent hazardous chemicals from entering our water.


Yes, indeed, no money, no water.  Water wars are just another method of asset stripping according to Ellen Brown at Web of Debt:


Excerpt:


Today the water wars continue on a larger scale with new players. It’s no longer just the farmers against the ranchers or the urbanites. It’s the people against the new “water barons”  – Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Monsanto, the Bush family, and their ilk – who are buying up water all over the world at an unprecedented pace…..


At a news conference on March 19, 2015, California Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon warned, “There is no greater crisis facing our state today than our lack of water.”


Jay Famiglietti, a scientist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, California, wrote in the Los Angeles Times on March 12th:


Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain.


Maps indicate that the areas of California hardest hit by the mega-drought are those that grow a large percentage of America’s food. California supplies 50% of the nation’s food and more organic food than any other state.


Western Growers estimates that last year 500,000 acres of farmland were left unplanted, an amount that could increase by 40% this year. The trade group pegs farm job losses at 17,000 last year and more in 2015.


T. Boone Pickens’ massive water contamination due to fracking isn’t the only threat to humankind caused by “fracking”, seems that there is now a shortage of frack sand.  Sand is vital to sustenance of human life, is finite and suddenly there is a shortage. 





Wisconsin has the largest deposit of the type of sand required for fracking. From Conservation Voters:

Excerpt:


Frac sand mining is literally booming in western Wisconsin – and it’s wreaking havoc on air and water quality and public health…


Wisconsin currently holds 75% of the frac sand market in the entire United States. If you are at all concerned about the booming, polluting, unregulated hydraulic fracking practices occurring across the United States, you should definitely be concerned about the booming, polluting, unregulated frac sand mining practices happening right here in Wisconsin….


The inhalation of silica sand can cause silicosis, an incurable disease that has also been known to cause cancer. Because of this threat, the federal government regulates workers’ exposure to the dust, but there are no limits set for the general public.


That’s right there are no federal or state laws that protect the public from airborne carcinogens caused by open pit sand mines in Wisconsin or any state.  And guess, what?  The sand war is turning out to be as deadly if not more so than water wars.  According to PRI.org:


Excerpt:


The world's deadly war over sand: 7 things you need to know:

Sand is finite. And people are starting to kill for it…


 “We use so much of it. We use 40 billion tons of sand each year. And that number is just growing and growing. And we’re running out of the stuff we can use for construction….”


 “The most common form of sand, the one that is about 70 percent of everything you see is made from quartz. It’s basically just teeny-tiny little rocks. And that’s the stuff we use in concrete. That’s the biggest thing we use sand for. But we also use it for windows. Every piece of glass you see is basically made out of sand. Every silicon chip in your computer is made out of sand."



Desert sand doesn’t work in construction… “Because it’s been eroded by wind, rather than water, it’s shaped a little too round to stick together properly…


 It’s happening all over the world...  “There are criminal gangs that are making huge money illegally mining sand. They do what mafias do everywhere. They bribe police. They bribe courts. They bribe government officials. And when they need to, they kill people who get in their way.”


People are dying in the sand wars.


The bloodiest battles are in India. “They estimate hundreds of people have been killed in the last few years. Its gangs. Its different sand mafias fighting each other over turf. But also, they’ve killed at least a dozen police officers, government officials, environmental activists and just ordinary folks all over India.”


In an article in Bloomberg in 2008 T. Boone Pickens was described as such:


If water is the new oil, T. Boone Pickens is a modern-day John D. Rockefeller. Pickens owns more water than any other individual in the U.S. and is looking to control even more. He hopes to sell the water he already has, some 65 billion gallons a year, to Dallas, transporting it over 250 miles, 11 counties, and about 650 tracts of private property.


By the mid-1990s, though, Pickens had fallen…  He went through an expensive divorce from his second wife and retreated to his ranch. It was in the midst of this that he acquired a newfound regard for water as a commodity that should be bought, sold, and traded for the benefit of those who own it and those who can afford it.


That is life in the new America.  The new America resembles something from your worst nightmare, and it is infecting the entire world.  So here we are, living in The Prophecy and we can only hope God has a damned good lawyer or we’ll all be damned.


By Patricia Baeten








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