Privatise it!

I noted the other day that the Bush administration had hidden away in their $700 million "aid" package to help the hungry a requirement to shamelessly promote the use of GM organisms. Today's NY Times has a story about the severe cutbacks in basic crop research worldwide that are preventing the development of resistant but non-GM crops. Noted in the article is that fact that the US is also planning on cutting back "by as much as 75 percent, its $59.5 million annual support for a global research network that focuses on improving crops vital to agriculture in poor countries". So we are willing to give away $700 million, largely to American agri-business companies who grow the crops that we give away "in kind", but are not willing to fund the basic but non-commercial research that will assist many countries become self-sustaining.

Everything's political

I reckon that Captain Codpiece's evil minions hoped that we weren't looking when they altered the $770 million aid proposal to assist in dealing with the world wide food crisis into a vehicle for the shameles promotion of GM organisms in the developing world. I wonder how many of his underlings will end up on the board at Monsanto?

You do realise that this is not the intended purpose of "humanitarian" aid, don't you?

Will they get justice?

Landless Brazilian peasants protesting at a genetically modified seed farm run by Swiss biotechnology firm Syngenta were shot at by guards and two of the men were killed. I wonder if Blackwater branching out into biotech security.