­por Louis Nevaer

New America Media

Mexican soldiers participate in antidrugs operatives.

Mérida, Mexico – For almost a century, Mexico enjoyed the rare privilege of not having waged war. Now, almost six years into the “War on Drugs,” the country’s military is confronting an issue increasingly familiar to veterans and their families in the United States: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Mexico’s Constitution prohibits its armed forces from leaving Mexican territory without a declaration of war, relegating service members to humanitarian relief efforts. These include being among the first to arrive with food and medical supplies to Haiti following that nation’s devastating earthquake in 2010, and routine aid missions in neighboring Central American countries during natural disasters.

The “War on Drugs” has changed all that, however, and for the first time since World War II, Mexican soldiers are living through war-conditions at home, carrying with them the trauma of their experience.

“It’s not possible to engage in combat, and see war atrocities, and not be affected,” says Dr. Roberto Gómez, an expert on mental health issues. “Mexican soldiers are exposed to the same trauma as if they were in war.”

The emergence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is new for Mexico’s military, which has deployed some 50,000 soldiers across the country to battle powerful drug-trafficking cartels. Their tasks range from patrolling streets and investigating crimes to gathering intelligence.

It is an under-reported, but fast-growing phenomenon, one that is both an unforeseen consequence of the “War on Drugs” that since 2006 has claimed more than 47,000 lives, and one for which the Mexican military is desperately unprepared to handle. Mexican military hospitals are designed to treat physical injuries, not psychological conditions that require long-term care.

There are no statistics on the number of cognitively impaired soldiers in Mexico’s armed forces, but anecdotal evidence suggests that psychologically impaired soldiers are removed from the general population and given anti-depressants or similar sedatives to calm them down. Then they are  honorably discharged – the hope being that Mexico’s medical system, known as IMSS (Mexican Institute of Social Security, the national health care program), will take care of them. “This is an unreasonable expectation,” says Gómez.

“The national health care program is not designed to treat young men in their thirties who have experienced trauma leading to PTSD. Oftentimes they are confused, unable to sleep, have recurring nightmares, unwittingly provoke fights and are prone to violent outbursts.”

Families of military personnel who have been discharged report difficulty in assisting their loved ones, many of whom are turning to alcohol and need assistance in the most basic tasks, from dressing themselves, to watching television without having an episode when  a program airs that contains violence o In Mexico’s War on Drugs, Veterans Struggle With PTSD for Mexican society at large.

Families, meanwhile, are often reluctant to make demands on the military to provide continuing health care for soldiers suffering from PTSD, and the national health care system itself is only now coming to terms with the needs of these patients. Taking a page from history, however, Mexicans have begun to broach the subject in an indirect way: through theatre.

Not unlike the U.S., where the reading of Sophocles’ “Ajax” — which tells  the story of a veteran who, upon returning from war, is overcome by depression and kills his commanding officer — has helped American Marines deal with the consequences of PTSD, Mexicans are turning to drama to give a voice to the sudden emergence of the illness.

“We are dealing with a disorder that is becoming increasingly common in society and by those who have been victims of abduction, rape, or have experienced war or violence,” says Brazilian actress Giselle Jorgetti, who stars in the play “Em Tempo de Paz,” which explores PTSD during peacetime and is now being performed on stage in Mexico.

“The intention,” she explains, “is to bring the issue out into the public because it is a disorder that does not manifest immediately and may occur even  years after having lived through a certain situation.” For American service members, many of them struggling to cope with the aftereffects of one or more deployments to Afghanistan or Iraq, dramatizing internal wounds like PTSD has proven to be an effective tool.

“I know it’s a bit odd to have Greek plays read to a conference of military people,” said David Strathairn, best known for his Oscar-nominated role in “Good Night, Good Luck,” during a 2008 performance of Sophocles’ tragedy, in which he played the part of Philoctetes. “But you read these plays and you understand they are the first investigations into the condition of war in Western civilization.” ­A similar investigation is now underway in Mexico.

“When someone hears a noise and is startled, or smells an odor that reminds them of a situation they lived through, then that person behaves as if they were reliving that moment,” Jorgetti told reporters. “The protagonist in the play is a person who is increasingly isolated [because of his PTSD].” For the thousands of Mexican soldiers returning home after their tours of duty, such isolation and the memories of an increasingly violent and seemingly endless war hover just beneath the surface.

And as families await the safe return of husbands, fathers, sons, brothers and uncles – in scenes similar to those played out across the Unites States – there remains the open-ended question of their mental and emotional health, and the ability of Mexico’s military to address such challenges.

by Jenn Walker
Newsreview.com

Fortune 500 corporation Monsanto shut down its local operations last week as protestors, holding signs and taking turns on handheld megaphone, demanded that the GMO giant needs to go.

The Davis rally was in solidarity with a grassroots attempt to shut down Monsanto offices across the globe. Locally, it worked: After catching wind of pothe planned demonstration, Monsanto employees were directed to avoid work on Friday, March 16.

Activist Pamm Larry leads hundreds of volunteers across the state in collecting 800,000 signatures before April 22 to qualify the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act initiative for this fall’s ballot.

The measure, if passed, would require that any food containing genetically engineered ingredients have a label indicating that the product was derived from genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. It would also mandate that foods cannot be labeled “natural” if they have been processed in any way (i.e., canned, cooked, frozen, fermented, etc.). “People don’t have time to take a college course on what is and isn’t labeled,” she says.

Genetically engineered foods, according to the initiative, are foods in which the genetic makeup has been altered through vitro nucleic acid techniques, cell fusion or hybridization techniques that don’t occur naturally. This includes foods that are genetically engineered to be resistant to pesticides in order to increase crop yields, such as the controversial corn variety created by Dow Chemical that is resistant to the herbicide 2,4-D.

While this initiative will not ban genetically engineered foods, it will ­allow consumers to make a choice whether or not to buy these foods, Larry says. And, while she did  not provide any numbers, she is confident the act will garner enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. Meanwhile, a committee called Stop the Costly Food Labeling Initiative has cropped up to oppose the ballot-measure effort.

This group is backed by the California Farm Bureau Federation, the California Seed Association, the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association and the Council for Biotechnology Information. The committee says regulation would be costly to the state and that it would put California farmers at a competitive disadvantage. Farmers in other states won’t be held to the same standards, they argue, and this would increase the food prices.

The committee cites an analysis released by the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, which estimates that regulation of the measure could cost up to $1 million annually. The LAO further predicts a cost burden for the courts to pursue violations.

The committee also emphasizes the fact that the FDA and medical experts have deemed genetically engineered foods safe for consumption. But Dr. Glayol Sahba, volunteer signature gatherer and Sacramento family physician, noted that the American Academy of Environmental Medicine called for a moratorium on genetically modified foods in 2009, concluding that “GM foods pose a serious health risk.”

The academy cites several animal studies that have shown health risks related to GMO consumption, including infertility, immune dysregulation, accelerated aging, and changes in the liver, kidney, spleen and gastrointestinal system. “Transgenic foods have only been around 10 years,” Sahba said. “We need to not expose people [to these foods] when we are not sure of the consequences to people and the environment.”

According to a statewide poll conducted by EMC Research in June of last year, 81 percent of California voters said they would support an initiative that required GMO foods to be labeled.

The push for GMO labeling is also gaining momentum around the country; as many as 14 states have attempted to pursue similar measures, including Connecticut, Michigan, Oregon, Washington and Vermont. Last week, 55 members of Congress signed off on a bicameral letter to the FDA in support of a petition filed by the Center for Food Safety advocating GMO labeling. Consumers want to see a change in the food system, Larry says, and are demanding transparency. “People are fired up,” she says. “Many of us in the country have felt powerless for a long time, [but] when we unite we can get something done.”

by Bob Livingston

Monsanto is the largest producer of genetically engineered seeds. Monsanto should be named an enemy of the State. It’s definitely an enemy of the people. Instead, the company has essentially become another branch of government.

Monsanto is engaged in government-sponsored agricultural terrorism. It’s government-sponsored because there is a revolving door between the company, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and firms that lobby Congress on Monsanto’s behalf. Dow, Bayer, other chemical companies and Big Agriculture are Monsanto’s co-conspirators in agricultural terrorism.

In addition to contaminating our food supply with pesticides, hormones and genetic modifications, water supplies are being contaminated as well — even for those who live in the city far away from farmland. And anyone trying to grow crops uncontaminated by Monsanto’s genetically engineered (GE) frankenseeds can be slapped with a lawsuit if the prevailing winds or pollinating insects cause pollen from Monsanto-patented crops to mingle with non-Monsanto GE crops.

The Union of Concerned Scientists recently listed eight ways Monsanto fails at being a good steward of food and moves over to food and environmental terrorism:

Promoting pesticide resistance: Monsanto’s Roundup Ready and Bt technologies lead to resistant weeds and insects that can make farming harder and reduce sustainability. The idea is, supposedly, to create crops that ward off insects and other pests. But the result has been to create insects that are pesticide-resistant. And even worse, application of systemic pesticides like Dow Chemical’s Clothianidin or GE crops that kill “pests” are behind the deaths of hundreds of thousands of honeybee colonies through colony collapse disorder. In almost every case, the EPA and/or FDA ignored science or used junk science to justify approval of the chemicals and crops.

Increasing herbicide use: Roundup resistance has led to greater use of herbicides, with troubling implications for biodiversity, sustainability and human health. By planting crops engineered to be resistant to herbicides, farmers are able, in theory, to keep down weeds by spraying increasing amounts of herbicides. But these toxic chemicals are finding their way into our foods and contaminating our water supplies. Roundup’s key ingredient, glyphosate, is also linked to a decrease in the monarch butterfly population by killing the plants butterflies rely on for habitat and food. Roundup is also linked to the spread of fusarium head blight in wheat, which makes the crop unsuitable for human or animal consumption. Now we also know that use of these herbicides has created “super weeds” that have developed a resistance to Roundup. So Monsanto and Dow are combining to reintroduce the use of the herbicide 2, 4-D, one-half of the defoliant Agent Orange used in Vietnam. Agent Orange is a carcinogen that caused Hodgkin’s lymphoma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, leukemia and other diseases in Vietnam veterans.

Spreading gene contamination: Engineered genes have a bad habit of turning up in non-GE crops. When this happens, sustainable farmers — and their customers — pay a high price. In other words, GE crops are contaminating the crops of those who want to use natural or heirloom seeds and eat and grow foods the way God intended. There is no way of telling what long-term ramifications of these contaminated crops will have on the foods we eat – and, therefore, our health. Plus, as we mentioned above, small farmers are being attacked in courts by Monsanto if their crops — through no fault of their own — become contaminated by Monsanto GE crops. According to a report released by Britain’s Soil Association, GE crops have cost Americans $12 billion in farm subsidies in the past three years and is bankrupting wheat and cotton farmers.

Expanding monoculture: Monsanto’s emphasis on limited varieties of a few commodity crops contributes to reduced biodiversity and, as a consequence, to increased pesticide use and fertilizer pollution.

Monoculture, the planting of a single crop on large swaths of land, is anathema to nature. Everyone knows that crops must be rotated to keep the soil properly balanced. Different plants that bloom and pollinate at different times are essential to sustain the nourishment needed by many insects, birds and animals. Yet Monsanto, Dow and huge corporate farms disavow the laws of nature for profit, and the environment suffers. Monoculture also provides a vast feeding ground that attracts ever-stronger pests, creating a cycle of increased use of pesticides to combat the problem created by the use of monoculture and more pesticides. And when the pests, as in the case of the corn rootworm develop a resistance to the engineered pesticide, they can wipe out thousands of acres of crops, driving up food prices and causing food shortages.

Marginalizing alternatives: Monsanto’s single-minded emphasis on GE fixes for farming challenges may come at the expense of cheaper, more effective solutions. Relying on genetic engineering to fix the problem creates more problems while limiting natural or less expensive solutions.

Lobbying and advertising: Monsanto outspends all other agribusinesses on efforts to persuade Congress and the public to maintain the industrial agriculture status quo. Worse, as noted above, it has become a revolving door that sees members of Congress passing to the company to become executives and lobbyists, and company executives moving to the regulatory agenagencies to regulate their former employer. This is simply crony capitalism at its worst.

Suppressing research: By creating obstacles to independent research on its products, Monsanto makes it harder for farmers and policy makers to make informed decisions that can lead to more sustainable agriculture. And through its system of crony capitalism, research benefitting the company — even when fraudulent — is approved by the regulatory agencies, while natural alternatives are suppressed or outlawed altogether. Independent organizations attempting to provide a rebuttal to the flawed research are often quashed and silenced.

Falling short on feeding the world: Monsanto contributes little to helping the world feed itself, 1and has failed to endorse science-backed solutions that don’t give its products a central role. In fact, what Monsanto is doing is acquiring a state-sponsored monopoly on seeds. GE crops create non-renewable seeds that do not germinate from year to year. This requires the farmer to go back to Monsanto each year to purchase the seeds for the next year’s crop, rather than saving seeds and using seeds from last year’s crop (using the seed corn). This also happens to farmers using heirloom seeds whose crops are contaminated by GE crop pollen.

The European Union has mandated labeling of GM ingredients in food and feed. But that doesn’t happen in the United States, and efforts are afoot to prevent special labeling. But evidence shows that exposure to GE plants and GM feed affects food animals in many ways.

What all this means is that even with the knowledge and desire to avoid GE or GM foods, as the Monsantos and Dows of the world gain more of a hold on world agriculture, it’s going to eventually become impossible to avoid exposure to them. Even planting your own garden with heirloom seeds won’t guarantee you the ability to avoid genetic pollution if someone nearby is using GE crops and pollinators cross pollinate the fields or winds blow the pollen into your garden and it pollinates your crop.

And pesticides and GE and GM foods are being linked to myriad negative health effects including attention- deficit hyperactivity disorder, obesity, diabetes and hormonal disorders.

The insecticide-producing Bt gene is even being detected in the blood tests of people who eat a typical diet, including in pregnant women and their fetuses. Research shows it also kills human kidney cells. Fascism is the union of government and big business. In this system, the people are pawns. Government, Big Agriculture and their partners in crime Monsanto, Dow and Bayer are engaged in a fascist system in which an unwitting populace is kept fat and stupid and without choices, and even those who understand and recognize the system for what it is are allowed fewer opportunities to opt out.

These are who the War on Terror should truly be against. And thanks to global activism and the growth of the Internet and advent of social media, the war on the real terrorists is gaining headway against their war on our health. We can battle agricultural terrorism on our own by minding what we are buying and eating. When you grocery shop, refuse to buy GMO products. Many food producers are now labeling their non-GMO foods as such. You can also use the “Non-GMO Shopping Guide,” available for download here. ­http://www.nongmoshoppingguide.com/.