by Ethan A. Huff

For at least a decade, Monsanto, the world’s most evil corporation, has been illegally charging Brazilian farmers growing the company’s genetically-modified (GM) crops a two percent tax on production, and a three percent tax for cross-contamination of seed, say plaintiffs in a new lawsuit. And according to CorpWatch, the agri-giant could soon have to fork over $7.5 billion in reimbursements to more than five million Brazilian farmers as a result of these blatant crimes.

Oddly enough, Monsanto’s very presence in Brazil was predicated on fraud, as its GM soy seeds were first smuggled into the country illegally back in 1998. Fast forward about 13 years and nearly 75 million acres of arable land in Brazil are now occupied by Monsanto’s GM crops, the vast majority of which constitute Roundup Ready soy.

But the en­tire Monsanto growing system for GMOs, which prohibits farmers from freely saving seeds and reusing them the following year — and in this case, requires farmers to pay private taxes directly to Monsanto to do so — is entirely against the law in Brazil. Even though former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio “Lula” Da Silva basically grand­fathered-in legalization for Monsanto’s GM crops back in 2005 because they were already being widely grown in the country illegally, Monsanto is still breaking the law by levying taxes against farmers and requiring them to pay royalties.

“The law gives producers the right to multiply the seeds they buy and nowhere in the world is there a requirement to pay (again),” said Jane Berwanger, a lawyer representing the Brazilian farmers in the case, concerning Monsanto’s illegal user fees and taxes. “Producers are in effect paying a private tax on production.”

Back in April, a judge in Rio Grande Do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, ruled that Monsanto’s user fees were illegal, and ordered the company to not only stop collecting them, but also to begin reimbursing farmers in that state for all fees collected since 2004. This judge also noted that Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seed patent has also already expired in Brazil.

Monsanto is attempting to appeal this decision, of course, but in the process could be making its final penalty even worse. And in response to this appeal, the Brazilian Supreme Court has decided that the Rio Grande Do Sul court’s ultimate ruling, whatever that ends up being, will apply to every farmer throughout the country, and not just in Rio Grande Do Sul, which could make the final penalty for Monsanto upwards of $7.5 billion.

Monsanto has indicated that it plans to continue collecting fees and charging taxes until the courts issue their final ruling on the matter. But this ruling is not expected to be issued until 2014.

In other Monsanto related news:

92 percent of Americans want the FDA to label GMO foods – Sign this labeling petition if you’re one of them

by Ethan A. Huff
Natural News

An overwhelming majority of Americans believe the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a legal responsibility to require proper labeling of foods containing genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). But to this day, the FDA refuses to comply with the demands of the American people, who it is supposed to represent, or with the law, which is why your help is needed to force this rogue agency to finally step up and do the right thing.

Based on a number of different polls conducted, anywhere between 90 and 95 percent of people living in the U.S. want GMOs to be labeled. According to the new GMO labeling campaign Just Label It!, 92 percent of Americans want to know whether or not the foods they buy contain GMOs, especially when these foods are being fed to young children.

“While our reasons for wanting to know what’s in our food may vary, what unifies us is the belief that it’s our right,” says the Just Label It! campaign about mandatory GMO labeling. “Without labeling of GE (genetically engineered) foods, we cannot make informed choices about our food.”

This is why Just Label It! has created an online petition addressed to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg that urges the agency to stand up for food transparency, and label GMOs. So far, more than 1.1 million people have signed this petition since it was first created just a few short months ago, and Just Label It! is now aiming to reach 1.2 million signatures as part of its next campaign goal. You can access and sign the petition here: http://justlabelit.org/.

Since March, more than 300,000 additional signatures have been gathered by Just Label It! (http://www.naturalnews.com/035223_GMO_labeling_petition.html), and several dozen new partner organizations have also joined in to support the initiative. (http://justlabelit.org/partners/).

­by Latin Briefs and Prensa Latina

Andrés Manuel López Obrador

Mexico’s defeated leftist presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador is once again refusing to go quietly. He is preparing a legal challenge alleging that the victor Enrique Peña Nieto benefited from massive vote buying and campaign overspending by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), as well as media bias. He is insisting that the elections should be annulled or invalidated.

Intriguingly, the ruling Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) is levelling exactly the same charges at Peña Nieto while, pointedly, refusing to present a joint legal challenge with the Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD) and recognising his victory.

Venezuela gets its Mercosur wish

After a bit of deft maneuvering by Brazil and Argentina, Venezuela will be formally welcomed as a full member of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur, founded by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) on 31 July next.

­President of the National Action Party (PAN), Gustavo Madero, said that the presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto most stop claiming because there were really irregularities in the elections of July 1.

Mexican coalition challenges elections

Madero faced the statements of Peña Nieto, aspiring to the presidency by the coalition of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and Green Ecologist, who described as false the buying of votes in his favor, said the daily La Jornada.

He also said that the former Governor of the State of Mexico is still lying, because his party wins election with money and deception. This occurred in this election, he said.

Madero added that his party is convinced of two things: they did not win the elction and that there were serious flaws that must be analyzed, punished and corrected.

He said that to date there has been agreed to coordinate efforts to ensure that they can punish and correct the detected irregularities in the use of surveys for propaganda purposes.

In addition, there were also assessed what is related to the exceeding of the limit of campaign spending, the interference of the governors in the electoral process and the case Monex, which as experts have warned fits into the scheme of money laundering.

Today expires the deadline for political parties submit their deputies with the authorities and not until Sept. 6, in which the Electoral Tribunal of Judicial Power of the Federation has given its decision on the classification of the elections.

According to the final count of the IFE is ratified in the lead with 38.21 percent of the votes to Peña Nieto, followed by López Obrador, with 31.59, and the PAN Josefina Vázquez Mota with 25.41.

­

by Susanne Posel
Infowars.com

The globalist design for micro-apartments is being championed by New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg. These “studio and one-bedroom apartments” will be no bigger than 275 to 300 sq ft. These tiny living spaces are smaller than currently allowed by building regulations, according to a statement by Bloomberg’s office; however the zoning regulations will be waived in over to construct the first of many compact pack ‘em and stack ‘em housing model in the city-owned area of Kips Bay.

The intention is to construct an area in NY that accommodates restricted housing space, eliminates car use in favor for walking and bicycling and promotes mass transit. Herding the expanding population into dense areas and smaller living spaces will instill the new class of poor and obligate their psychological transition toward accepting the Agenda 21 megacity concept .

According to the globalists at America 2050, “metropolitan regions will be an interlocking economic system, shared natural resources and ecosystems, and common transportation systems link these population centers together.”

Bloomberg stated: “Developing housing that matches how New Yorkers live today is critical to the city’s continued growth, future competitiveness and long-term economic success.”

Bloomberg has announced this “ New Housing Marketplace Plan ” with directives toward financing 165,000 units that are more affordable than anything on the current market. By 2014, these units are expected to be competing to get New Yorkers out of their large apartments and single-family houses and into a tiny space to maximize functionality in a clear move toward creating Agenda 21 megacities out of existing spaces.

David Bragdon, director of the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability asserts that: “New Yorkers can be better served by adapting the city’s apartment models to allow more efficient and sustainable homes. Today’s announcement is fulfillment of the pledge in PlaNYC, the Mayor’s long-term sustainability strategy, to update the City’s regulations to better accommodate the population and demographics of the future.”

PLaNYC 2030 is a scheme by Bloomberg, which was devised in 2007, to “prepare the city for one million more residents” to create housing in line with Agenda 21 policies in conjunction with “over 25 City agencies to work toward the vision of a greener, greater New York.”

The initiative includes transformation of hundreds of acres of land into “new parkland” and micro-sized units that are built adjacent to public transit systems. These plans will force New Yorkers out of their cars and into highly-dense areas where living space is severely limited in an effort to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions 13% below 2005 levels.”

A request made by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development states that the program called adAPT NYC is specifically aimed at the building of smaller homes in accommodation for the growing population in NY.

Robert K. Steel, deputy mayor for Economic Development stated: “Under Mayor Bloomberg’s leadership, New York City continues to be a magnet for talent from around the world and around the five boroughs, and with this new model for development of affordable housing, we will help ensure that New Yorkers have more options that meet their housing needs. This innovative public-private partnership will build on the Bloomberg Administration’s track record of leveraging private-sector expertise and resources to develop quality affordable housing.”

As one, two and three bedroom; as well as single-family homes sky-rocket in price in NY, these small apartments are being promoted. Seventy-five of the micro-sized units will include kitchens and bathrooms; however interior design will depend on affordability and innovative layouts that maximize space.

City planners of the future hope to have this concept spread across the nation; where young “urbanites” flock to smaller living spaces that are equal to dormitory-style living. Lowering prices will attract those on fixed incomes. Officials in Manhattan, who estimate that 46.3% of households consist of a single person, are marketing these micro-units for those who spend more time socializing outside the home.

Similar programs are slated for San Francisco where developers are currently seeking state approval for rentals as small as 150 sq ft. These apartments would be the size of a parking space . Under the guise of addressing the 42% of residents in San Francisco who live alone, Patrick Kennedy, developer who built the Berkeley bungalow, states that this maximization of space “meets the needs of that demographic.”

Scott Wiener, project supervisor, claims that under proposed legislation developers would be allowed to build units with just 150 square feet of living space. It would also require a separate kitchen, bathroom and closet for a ENDtotal of 220 square feet.

­“The tenement problem was big families in very small (spaces),” Bloomberg said. “We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about one or two people who want something they can afford, and they don’t entertain or need big space.”

Bloomberg’s officials assert that this is not a scheme to warehouse the poor in NY; however what else could it be?

Kerri White, housing advocate and director for the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board , claims that these living conditions are good and that “the general attitude toward space and how we use space is very different in New York City. People are used to living in smaller quarters.”

­by Orsetta Bellani

Image of the long protest that the Association of Relatives of those Affected by Chronic Kidney Failure (ANAIRC) hold in Managua since March 9, 2009. (PHOTO BY ORSETTA BELLANI)

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) has taken three brothers and the father of Carmen Rios. All of them worked as laborers at Ingenio San Antonio, a sugar company of 40,000 hectares located in the Municipality of Chichigalpa, North West of Nicaragua. The mill is owned by Nicaragua Sugar Estate Ltd, part of Nicaraguan economic giant, Pellas Group. From the sugar cane, the company gets sugar, ethanol and the prestigious Rum Flor de Caña, exported worldwide.

The Pacific coast of Central America has been affected by the epidemic of CKD: in Salvador, chronic kidney failure is the leading cause of death among men, while among the Nicaraguan male population it has caused more victims than AIDS and diabetes together. However, the causes of the disease have not been fully elucidated.

In the Municipality of Chichigalpa, which has 45,000 inhabitants, about 7,000 people became ill from CKD. The family created the association ANAIRC (Nicaraguan Association of Those Affected by Chronic Kidney Failure), complaining that the Pellas Group is responsible for the deaths of their loved ones, former workers of Ingenio San Antonio. “The Pellas Group says they have nothing to do with the deaths and that pesticides banned in the United States, Canada and the European Union do not cause the disease”, explains Carmen Rios, president of ANAIRC. “ANAIRC was born in 2004 and the following year we marched along the 135 km between Chichigalpa and Managua. Since March 9th, 2009 we sit in this area in the center of the capital. We ask the Pellas Group to stop use pesticides that harm the health of workers and pollute the water that everyone drinks, we want to reforest the area and sit at a table of dialogue, to determine a compensation for the deaths and the damage they cause to our health. And we want people to know what’s behind the azure they consume, behind the rum they drink and the ethanol they put in their engines, they need to know that many people here in Nicaragua are dying.”

The community of La Isla (The Island)- sarcastically renamed “The Island of widows,” which is located within the Ingenio San Antonio and it’s completely surrounded by sugar cane fields, represents the most serious case of CKD. On The Island, 70 percent of men and 30 percent of women have been affected by kidney disease. In this place where the only option is to work in the mill, the first to get sick of CDK are laborers, but the disease also spreads to their families. This situation also causes many social and psychological problems, and creates a vicious circle that is very hard to exit, since the children of the deceased are still working in the same company.

“In 2006 the World Bank lent money to the Pellas Group to build the ethanol plant,” says Viola Cassetti from La Isla Foundation, a controversial foundation that works in Chichigalpa. “The workers filed a complaint alleging that some pesticides and the lack of adequate protections were causing an epidemic. The World Bank commissioned an investigation to Boston University, which after four years does not have a clear answer: it just published a report that said it did not find any direct connection between pesticides and CKD, but that it cannot exclude its existence. The epidemic can have various causes: it can be linked to pollution, and genetic factors may also influence. Another hypothesis that has been considered is the dehydration caused by excessive heat: laborers lose two liters of liquid every hour, so it’s a type of work that can be compared to running a race. They would have to drink ten liters of water a day and rest 45 minutes every 15 minutes of work.”

According to Martha Flores from the Recinos Inti Pacha Mama Managua association this explanation is too simple: “The heat is a characteristic of the climate of the area, it cannot be considered the cause of the that ease of all these people. In Chichigalpa, the water is contaminated with 18 different types of pesticides.” In fact, 98.7 percent of the wells are contaminated. The first to discover the presence of pesticides in the wells of Chichigalpa and bring up its links with CKD was Dr. Enrique Jose Rios Urbina, with the support of the laboratory analyses of the Autonomous University of Nicaragua. Dr. Rios Urbina, brother of the president of ANAIRC, worked at the hospital at Ingenio San Antonio, which is owned by the same Pellas Group and represents the only health facility in the ­area. According to reports the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), which in October 2008 dealt with the case, “the witnesses alleged that the hospital concealed the real causes of the disease, and thus provides inadequate medical treatment. In the words of a particularly qualified witness, employers were fully aware of the facts and verbally oriented the medical professionals for failing to report on the diseases they suffered.”

When Dr. Rios Urbina made his finding public, he was fired. He later died from CKD.

­

­

­by the El Reportero’s wire services

Hugo Chávez

Honduran attorney Antonio Trejo, who represented peasants who have attempted to reclaim land in the Caribbean province of Colon, was murdered by unknown killers in Tegucigalpa, a human rights group announced Sunday.

Trejo was the legal adviser to the MARCA land reclamation movement and was shot to death Saturday night near the Toncontin International Airport, the Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras, or Cofadeh, said.

According to the versions of the murder published in the local media, Trejo attended a wedding on Saturday night in the southern capital neighborhood of America near the airport and when he left the noisy venue to answer a cell phone call he had received he was riddled with bullets by gunmen waiting outside. Trejo was taken to the state-run Escuela Hospital, where he died, the Cofadeh report added.

The attorney was brought to trial by the Public Ministry in August after a peasant demonstration in the capital in which the protesters, some of them from MARCA, were demanding land.

The protest was broken up by the National Police and several of the demonstrators were injured in the melee.

Trejo, Confadeh said, “played a significant role in the defense of the right to land by peasant cooperatives affiliated with MARCA: San Isidro, Despertar, San Esteban and La Trinidad.”

The attorney presented “legal motions for several years until he got a civil judge to issue a ruling that returned the lands to the peasants on June 29 of this year, 18 years after they were taken from them by landowners Miguel Facusse and Rene Morales,” Cofadeh said.

However, according to the humanitarian organization, during a Supreme Court recess, the landowners had their lawyers introduce a motion that was resolved in an illegal manner to benefit them.

On July 18, Trejo said at a press conference at Cofadeh headquarters that the landowners were influence peddling in the courts to reverse a ruling returning the lands to the MARCA peasants.

In Bajo Aguan, one of the most fertile areas of Honduras, groups of peasants are demanding land from the government. It is a tense region with frequent armed clashes between laborers and security guards working for local land Pro-­owners and over the past three years more than 60 people have been killed.

The violence has not fallen off despite the fact that the government signed an agreement with the landholders to buy more than 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres), some of it cultivated with African palm, from which palm oil is extracted, to return to the peasants.

Honduran authorities say that the clashes that continue to occur in the region are being provoked by armed criminal bands who say they are peasants.

Other groups of laborers who are demanding land are affiliated with the Unified Movement of Peasants of Aguan, or MUCA. (Reported by Hispanically Speaking News).