[Guest]

"Good government is not a party government"

I'm inclined to agree. Whenever a party in power can feel free to make back room deals and implement unrequested (and usually undesired) changes to Canada's laws & policies, the people of Canada suffer. We shouldn't put up with it anymore.

This left/centre/right voting perspective is a pile of crap too. We should be electing independents (outlaw party politics) who will bow to the wishes of their constituents on major issues, rather than follow party policy. EVERY vote should be a vote of "best guess" of the constituents' wishes. MP's should be subject to recall by their constituency anytime a sufficiently supported petition demands it. The cabinet and prime minister should be voted to office by the MPs. They should be fully accountable to parliament and impeachable/replaceable by parliament for their actions. Everything should be open and above board. No secret back room deals; no unmandated policy changes.

With changes of this nature, we might stand a chance of fair government and real democracy.

[mk]

Thanks for posting this, it's the exact info requested. <p> Now, for useful activism on this, especially in the current Canadian climate, the substance of the GM/non-GM debate needs to be sidelined, because it is secondary. Not to mention informed public concern is usually over environment, intellectual property and antitrust issues, not merely public health. The biotech lobby continually diverts it toward a public health argument because they can win the latter and have no chance at winning the former. Opponents say: "terminator seeds and other biotech are an intellectual property ploy to coerce more and more of the world's food production into a perpetual license arrangement to a handful of powerful multinational corporations". The industry/PR response to this is: "safe? Of course it's safe to eat!". <p> The core exploitable issue here is, as usual, corruption. If, like with adscam, the public official(s) signing the cheques is/are the same one approving the expenditures is/are the same one <strike>conspiring</strike> cooperating with industry and PR flank, then it's the <b>same</b> corruption issue, no matter how much big business happens to like it in this particular case. <p> Such an approach would likely get a lot of conservatives and reformers onside, anyone who is against the revolving door, and who simply wants to protect or improve that #2 "Brand Canada" in the interest of their own export-oriented non-food-biotech business. Going around the world shilling for Monsanto isn't likely to help that ranking.

[Guest]

I think that day is not far away. We must start to elect members that swear their loyality to the constituency, and must report to the people that elect him or her.
Pay and pension should be based on performance amf if they are not performing for the consitiuency, then recall and send them packing.

We need people in office who do more than talk the talk , but walk the talk too, if we had such people, then we would have a much better society and cleaner environment to turn over to those who come after us.

We should not have anymore Base Gagetowns, Tainted Blood scandals, Westrays or Sponcorship Programs and the only way we will get there is to remove the party system and build towards a true democratic "peoples government".

It is time to clean up this country and those who wish to live in a corrupt dirty political system, should move on. Political parties have high-jacked "the peoples government" and it now belongs to the few, "government" should be for all the people, not just big business and unions, so lets send them a message and send them all packing, support more independent candidates, who will work to improve the lives of every Canadian and towards a clean healthy environment.

The time has come to shit or get off the pot, it is up to us to bring about change,not these corrupt political parties.

[Guest]

<a href="http://www.grain.org/">http://www.grain.org/</a><br />
A very good site for mankind

[Guest]

"Is it possible to get a link to that story on Iraq farmers? That's pretty interesting, not that I'm not taking your word for it, I'd just like official sources. Thanks."<br />
<br />
This is old news but still holds true.<br />
<a href="http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=6">http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=6</a><br />
<br />
Its part of Paul Bremer 97 Legal Orders.

[Patm]

Well, the Canadian Action Party is opposed to the patenting of life forms and a lot of other corporate<>government merging. Have a look at the archives section (I don't like that name - it should be "opinions")<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.canadianactionparty.ca/MainPages/News.asp?Type=TRUE&Mode=Archive">http://www.canadianactionparty.ca/MainPages/News.asp?Type=TRUE&Mode=Archive</a><br />
<br />
Disclaimer - as of about 5 months ago, I am a member of CAP so this is a plug!<br />

[Guest]

The Canadian Action Party is just another party, why is it that people cannot think outside these political parties anyway?
Why do we need political parties? All they do is lie, cheat and steal from the majority and help fill the pockets of the few who control these parties.

Canada and Canadians need something much better than these private clubs, which are nothing more than oligarchies. May we all live to see the end of all political parties, the sooner the better.

[Guest]

Hype and bluster about modifying crops. Read the news - just released 'The big Mexican Corn disaster' - never happened. Mexican corn was never affected by genetically modified corn. Sorry to bust your bubbles. But not really. How about coming up with some plausible evil corporate conspiracy theories? You could ask your neighbours, they work for them, they're the evil people you're pointing the finger at.

[Guest]

"I've seen no verifiable science that can legitimately link any health concerns to GM canola."

It took about 40 years to finally prove a link between smoking and cancer too. In the interim, the tobacco companies profited while their product killed millions of people. Do we have to go through another 40 years of pain & suffering (and extinction of natural organisms) before we can stop this nonsense?

A link has already been made between human immune response and GM corn. That you or I aren't aware of similar implications regarding canola is no reason for complacency.

Monsanto is deliberately working for the detriment of human inerests for the sake of corporate profit. Its corporate charter should be revoked and the company dismantled.

[Guest]

To suggest that playing God doesn't have consequences and that we should
patent life is niaeve. To this day we are not sure of how this will affect our
environment and consequently humans. The right to modify the genetic make-
up of a life form and call it your own is terrifying for so many different reasons.
So far I have not seen the promised wonders of GMO food, world hunger is on
the rise, our environment is struggeling to keep up with our plundering and the
corporations just seem to get richer. This type of science is not ment to better
the human race it is to line to pockets of the corporations, the government and
the lobbyists. I think it is sad that you are unable to see the boarder picture.
This isn't about finger pointing at a single country, it is about seeing the effect
on the globe.

[The Old Poop]

I think we may have the beginnings of a grass roots movement for political reform in this country. If enough of us vote for independent candidates in upcoming elections, we can break the back of the elitist oligarchy and put control back into the hands of the people.

Maybe we should form an "Organization of Independent Parliamentarians." A "political Party" with the platform of electoral reform and constituency control of legislation. In a paradoxical way, we'd finally be able to do away with party politics.

[mk]

"How about coming up with some plausible evil corporate conspiracy theories?"

OK, for the sake of argument, screw the health issue, and screw the environment issue. Are we to support efforts world-wide for a handful of mega-corporations, and a handful of national governments, to work together all cozy-like, until every single piece of non-depreciating equity in the farming process is owned lock, stock and barrel by these few mega-corporations? Engaging in such things as legislatively preventing a private business from communicating to it's customers that its products don't contain GMOs, or granting patents for stealing a plant variety from a community that's grown it for hundreds of years? Using government aid/trade pressure as the "sales pitch" for adopting this stuff? Preventing an organic farm or processor from suing when their product gets contaminated?

If you're going to try and kid yourself and call this the "free market", continuing this argument has no point. A free market is where I buy my vegetables.

[4Canada]

We need the death penalty for corporations. I tried to argue with the government back when labelling GM foods was being debated that if you cannot patent "nature", (and apparently you cannot) what Monsanto was patenting was modified nature... why were they allowed to call it by it's natureal name, i.e. canola? If seeds, or anything nature has provided us, is altered AT ALL then in my mind it must be renamed. There should be no way that modified foods can be given the same labels as natural foods to me that is completely wrong and needs to be made illegal. If Monsanto's arguement is that there is no recognizable difference then why do they have "rights" to anything. These patents are stricktly as Paul suggests for the corporations to own and manipulate our natural environments. This has always been what I consider to be one of the greatest crimes against humanity. The governments that have been supporting this kind of patenting should be thrown in frigging jails.

---
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." Friedrich Nietzsche

[FootPrints]

I was talking to an organic farmer about this today. He had not even heard about it. He said he had 120 pigs a week going off his farm, he couldn't believe what I said.

It's like something out of a bloody science fiction novel. 10 years ago no one would have imagined this is what it would amount to. We just can't sit back and let it happen.

What are our options? If we stop buying their products, fine. But what happens if we let this slip by and there is nothing left BUT their products? And the time comes when you can't grow from heritage seeds? We can't wait until it's too late.

I think we all need to start approaching our local farmers and concerned citizens, choosing a date across Canada and publicly protest the monopoly Monsanto is creating AND our governments complicity to it. We have to talk to our local and provincial politicians. We have to approach them on camera, follow them while they are out campaigning.

I was taking a break from the site because I was thinking about when Marcarc had said: not to take this site as an activist site, and he was right. True, we can gain a lot of information here. I've definately learn a thing or two, and post things that I care about but, I tend to leave feeling like I've done a lot of complaining but what have I accomplished. NOTHING.

Let's DO SOMETHING about this!







---
These days, if you are not confused, you are not thinking clearly. Mrs. Irene Peters

[Ed Deak]

The fact that we're able to talk about such things and exchange ideas freely and worldwide, something that never existed before in human history, is a great accomplishment in itself. The Net was created for military purposes and it is destroying the military. It always happens.

The MAI, in 1997, was the first fully negotiated international treaty, ready to be signed by the crooked politicians of the 29 OECD countries, but for the first time in history, it was knocked over and stopped by public opinion, thanks to the Internet.

If it hadn't been for the Net, it would have been signed in May 1997 and we would already be living under total corporate dictatorship. The problem is that the would be rulers haven't given up and the text of the MAI is now written into every so called "free trade agreement" like the GATS, FTAA, etc. etc. and its worldwide enforcement is the policy of the WTO. This means that if any of these treaties passes, there won't be any possibility even to talk about things like the GMOs, as any talk, or organization in opposition will be considered "against free market economy" and become a punisheable offence.

The fact that many of us know this and are talking about it is in itself a great step forward, as dictators fear nothing more than an informed public. This is why we can not have such debates in our daily media, because it is totally under corporate control and censorship, but the Net is still free and it is our first and foremost duty to keep it free. The rest will follow in good time. We have countless historical precedents proving this.

The best recent example of the self destruction of an empire was the demise of the Soviet Union with a whimper. There were no mass demonstrations, apart some minor violence in some of the satellites, like East Germany and Romania, no free exchange of information within the public, but the system, built on saturation propaganda, just croaked. Contrary to propaganda, the USSR hasn't been beaten by capitalism, or US military power, but by collective thinking
otherwise known as ESP, a very real phemomenon not counted on by rulers. When a criminal system has gone that last fatal step too far, it destroys itself. Period.

This is happening now, as we can watch and record, to this great era of "neoclassical market economics", the background
theory behind Iraq, the GMOs, globalization, corporate mind control and colonization. For example, governmental deregulation means a step forward to corporate self destruction, but the fools don't know it.

Humanity has always been pulled out of the dreck by its bootstrings by a very few and this is the last and best chance to keep it up and out. Many of us are not cut out for street battles and demonstrations, but as long as we keep up the exchange of information and spread it within our small circles, we're contributing greatly to the end of this crime wave against humanity and the Earth. Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.