Episodes
Monday Oct 21, 2013
Global Research News Hour - 10/21/13
Monday Oct 21, 2013
Monday Oct 21, 2013
The company Monsanto is a multinational Chemical and Agricultural Biotechnology company based in Creve Coeur, Missouri.
It is most famous (or infamous) for its production of genetically engineered seeds as well as its production of the weed killer Roundup.
The company, which began as a small chemical start-up company in 1901, has grown to become an immensely powerful corporation with Net Sales for the 2012 fiscal year of over $13.5 billion and operations in 68 countries across six continents. [2] [3] [4]
According to a recent study by Food and Water Watch, 93% of the US soybean market, and 80% of the US corn market contain genetics patented by the agribusiness giant. [5]
Monsanto owns over 1,676 patents on seeds plants and other agricultural applications. [6]
Since 1996, the amount of acreage supporting Monsanto’s genetically engineered (GE) crops has exploded from 3 million to 282.3 million worldwide. In the US alone, 151.4 million acres of land support Monsanto’s GE products, accounting for 40% of overall acreage devoted to agricultural production across the board. [7]
Monsanto’s success is not solely, if at all, attributable to its ability to create a superior product. Monsanto has been very aggressive in its lobbying and public relations efforts. According to figures from the Center for Responsive Politics, Monsanto has donated over $4,607,790 to US political campaigns since 1990, and has spent over $61,852,724 since 1998 lobbying elected representatives. [8]
More insidious perhaps, is the revolving door which sees Monsanto board members having worked for the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Agriculture, not to mention positions in public universities, industry and trade groups. (See diagrams below.)
Tuesday Oct 15, 2013
Tuesday Oct 15, 2013
The United States and its coalition allies have perpetrated serious violations of international law including the breaching of the UN Charter and multiple violations of the Geneva Conventions, the US Army Field manual, and the Hague Conventions. [1]
Over 600,000 civilians are estimated to have died as a direct consequence of US President George W. Bush’s war against Iraq and its mythical ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ [2] Depleted Uranium munitions has caused birth defects on a massive scale, and will plague this ancient civilization for millennia to come.
Amply documented, torture was employed by US troops under the authorization of US Officials like Vice President Richard Cheney, who comes to Canada in late October.
This installment of the Global Research News Hour features a look at US and allied war crimes and more particularly, the need for accountability for those crimes.
Denis Halliday is the former UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq ( September 1, 1997 until 1998.) He resigned from a 34 year career at the United nations in protest to what he saw as the ‘genocidal’ economic sanctions carried out against the Iraqi people through the UN Security Council. Halliday is intensely critical of the UN for aiding and abetting the US and UK in their criminal aggression of 2003 and beyond. He is also critical of the World Health Organization for likewise assisting the imperial Western Giants by suppressing its own report on the effects of the use by US forces of Depleted Uranium on the Iraqi civilian population. He outlines in this interview what he thinks the UN could have done, and still can do, to restore some credibility. Denis Halliday has been an occasional contributor to Global Research. This is his first interview for the Global Research News Hour.
Some soldiers such as Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejía and Joshua Key did their duty under international law and refused to return to service in the Iraq War.
Professor Francis Boyle is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law and an internationally recognized expert in his field. In 2007, Boyle publicly denounced what he called the “ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by the Bush Jr. administration and its nefarious foreign accomplices in allied governments such as in Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Georgia, etc.” Boyle is the author of Protesting Power: War, Resistance, and Law. He will explain the legal obligations of countries like the US and Canada to respect the right of soldiers to refuse to participate in this war.
While the Canadian government is turning away Iraq War resisters, they are welcoming credibly accused Iraq war criminals into the country. Mere weeks before Vice- President Cheney is to give a speech in Toronto, we will hear from Gail Davidson of Lawyers Against The War about the legal obligation of the Canadian government to deny the former Vice President admittance into Canada or place him under arrest upon entry.
Be sure to check out the Global Research Iraq War Reader for more in depth coverage of US/NATO War Crimes in Iraq.
Monday Sep 30, 2013
Monday Sep 30, 2013
Most human beings by nature are anti-war.
All military conflicts involve death and destruction, to say nothing of unintended consequences.
This is why for generations, military planners have made use of war pretext incidents to galvanize war-averse populations behind aggressive military actions against other countries.
These rationales are at core psychological operations utilizing justifications for military action generally not reflecting the government’s REAL reasons for going to war.
As researcher and anti-war campaigner Richard Sanders chronicles in his magazine Press For Conversion, war pretext incidents were involved in the Mexican-American War (1846), the Spanish-American War (1898), both World Wars, the Vietnam War (1964), the Wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, and NATO’s War Against Yugoslavia in 1999, among others.
Richard Sanders appears on this week’s Global Research News Hour to discuss this routine propaganda practice, and whether the August chemical attacks in a suburb of Damascus fit the pattern of standard war pre-text incidents.
In the final half hour of this week’s program, we hear two perspectives on one war pre-text in particular, that being the ‘Humanitarian Intervention.’
Lloyd Axworthy was the former Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister who authorized Canada’s military intervention in Yugoslavia in 1999 for humanitarian reasons. He recently co-authored a commentary in the Globe and Mail promoting a humanitarian intervention in Syria along the lines of the ‘Kosovo Model.’ The Global Research News Hour allowed Dr. Axworthy, now the President of the University of Winnipeg, room to make his case.
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, however, strenuously disagrees with Dr. Axworthy’s viewpoint, arguing that the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine frequently results in worsening a situation from a humanitarian perspective. Nazemroaya is a geo-political analyst specializing in Middle East and Central Asia politics. He is a Research Associate with the Centre for Research on Globalization, and the award-winning author of The Globalization of NATO and The War on Libya and the Re-Colonization of Africa. Nazemroaya was in Libya in 2011, and witnessed NATO’s Humanitarian intervention there first hand.