Published on 16 May 2012 by BackToConstitution

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This was shared with us at one of our BRIDGES by Charles Magus

where he say

Everything I have been saying about walk-ins is backed up with this that I did not know about. Never heard of Sherry Shriner until today.

PLEASE SHARE THIS POST TO LET AS MANY PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THIS.  THANK YOU.

SiNeh~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOBulprMa2A

Friday, May 24, 2013

WOOLWICH: FALSE FLAG: INSIDE JOB: FAKE

In Woolwich:

"I asked the on-site police officer in our school:

"I bet your briefing this morning at the station was an intense one.

"Officer: I was expecting exactly that, but it was just too odd. I asked why there's no briefing, believing we'd be told which streets to be in and what to look out for, but no. Nothing. It was as if it hadn't happened.

"'In fact, the skipper said 'it didn't happen.'

"He told me he didn't recognise any of the officers on his own patch at the scene either nor any of the members of the public, despite always seeing the same people."

Woolwich ‘Terror Attack’ – SE London, 22.5.13 • Cluesforum.info…

London Beheading Hoax Confirmed?

Anonymous writes:

"I know the busker who watched it all.

"He said they put chalk marks on the ground where the actors, sorry terrorists,  involved had to stand.

"He said it was so obviously fake; the police threatened to beat him up unless he moved and kept his mouth shut."


Lee and Rebecca, who have split.

On 22 May 2013, Lee Rigby is allegedly killed in Woolwich in London.

On 22 May 2013, Lee Rigby's battalion is training in Cyprus.

Woolwich: Lee Rigby Named As Soldier Victim - Sky News

Michael Adebolajo

Michael Adebolajo, 28, is the man videoed by witnesses with his hands coloured red.

"Virtually all the friends on his Facebook page have traditional British names such as Louise, Kelly, Robert, Craig, Gemma, Lauren and Paul, to name a few. Among them is Matthew Selt, now a professional snooker player."

'He was a Christian. A nice, normal guy. All his friends were white and used to go round to each other's houses all the time,' a former friend said.

Six years ago Adebolajo was arrested after being involved in protests outside the court known as the Old Bailey.

http://www.dailymail.

Did the security services subject Michael Adebolajo to mind control while he was in prison?

Michael Adebowale

Michael Adebowale is the other attacker.

"The 2nd attacker is shown wearing the beige/brown jacket talking to Ingrid Loyau-Kennett but minutes later is on the ground apparently wearing a black jacket. How does that work?

"The 'pool of blood' does not trail over to where the body was left in the road. Tap is saying the blood on the ground by the car only appeared after the body was moved."

Carol A. Valentine

Above: Ingrid Loyau-Kennett talks to one alleged murderer (left). 

Gemini Donnelly-Martin, 20, and her mother Amanda, talk to the second alleged murderer (right)

The attackers seem to be mind controlled - to not harm women (no male is allowed near the body only women).

Loyau-Kennett who talked to the murderer face to face was far too confident that he would not harm a woman. 

She looks to me to be security service...

Kal Dani

Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, from Helston in Cornwall, had been visiting London to see her children, Basil and Pawony Baradaran, when the drama unfolded.

Helston woman confronts machete w

Strangely, no sign of blood 

Adebolajo home.

"Louise, 26, from Romford, knew Michael Adebolajo and his brother from Marshalls Park school.

"She described him as clever... and 'such a nice person; everyone got along with him...

"'Everyone knew him. He was funny, hilarious. He was a down to earth, nice guy, there was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing you would have thought obviously this would have happened.'

"She said that Adebolajo's mother was strict and a regular churchgoer."

London attack: Police make two further arrests after Woolwich killing

The terror event in Woolwich in London may seem a little fishy?

One of the alleged 'Moslem terrorists' can be heard saying:
"You think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start busting our guns; you think politicians are going to die?

"No."

 

"It's going to be the average guy, like you, and your children...."

www.dailymail.co.uk/

It may seem strange that the 'terrorists' never seem to attack the top people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc62gkSN8W0

This 'spook' is seen here apparently rehearsing his lines. 
 

So, those who gain from the latest incident are:

1. Israel, which wants to paint Moslems as the enemy.

2. David Cameron, who can now 'do a Thatcher' and appear to stand up for Britain.

3. The military, which gains in sympathy.



You can tell a lot from photos

Fake

"The political statements made by the suspect ... will provide the state and the media all the cannon fodder it needs to link anti-government rhetoric with violent terrorism." 

London “Terror Attack” Blamed on Anti-Government Sentiment

"Lord Carlile, a former independent (he's a Jew) reviewer of terror laws, has said the killing should cause the Government to rethink the decision to drop the planned Communications Data Bill from the Queen's Speech, which would have extended email and internet monitoring to the security services."

The Telegraph

 

 

Other Link

http://aangirfan.blogspot.ie/2013/05/woolwich-false-flag-inside-job...

http://truthfrequencyradio.com/exclusive-london-beheading-hoax-conf...

 

 

 

One of the most frustrating but necessary things for journalists is to hold information on embargo until a go ahead is given for publishing. This is one of those frustrating times. Embargoes are needed to ensure plans are not sabotaged and lives are not endangered.
However, there are enough hints available in the public domain for us to put some dots together. What is clear is that there is a lot of hysteria in Washington D.C. (IRS, Benghazi etc.) and London, England (pedophilia, gold market). It is also clear that for at least six months public statements by the US State Department repeated in the Zionist media have been regularly contradicted by the Pentagon. There are also proliferating signs of a breakdown in the financial system. All of this points to some sort of dramatic black swan incident soon. We will talk more about this below.
In Asia as well, secret negotiations with North Korea and among Asian powers are clearly preparations for a change in the post-war global power structure. The visit to North Korea last week by Isao Iijima, special envoy of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, was a case in point. We got four different versions of what was talked about, two Japanese, one North Korean and one Chinese. Like the Sufi story of the blind men and the elephant (an elephant is big and flat, it is like a hose, it is like a tree trunk etc.) you need to piece the different versions together to figure out what is really going on. What the stories all agree upon though is that the visit was a best a fishing expedition, at worst a failure.
A source in the Japanese imperial family had the most interesting take on what Iijima had to say to the North Koreans. According to this source, Iijima asked the North Koreans if they would be willing to host 1 million Sabbatean refugees expected to want to leave Europe and the United States soon and was told no. This story about 1 million refugees looking for a place to go after leaving the United States has propped up repeatedly and from enough different sources that it seems to stem from a genuine belief that 1 million people will be asked to leave the US once the truth about what has been done by them to the American people is made public. My sources say they will not be allowed to leave but will have to face the music (ie be sent to the Fema camps they prepared for others).
The Chinese government source had a different angle on what went on during this visit. According to him, Iijima was told very clearly that North Korea was not willing to negotiate through the Japanese Foreign Ministry because it was staffed with Zionist slaves who have twice sabotaged deals reached between Japan and North Korea to normalize relations. This was in line with what a source in the Japanese public security police heard too.
The North Korean source also said the Japanese Foreign Ministry was not to be trusted. North Korea has made a very friendly and detailed proposal to deal with all outstanding issues preventing resumption of friendly diplomatic relations between North Korea and Japan. We know the details but have been asked to keep them secret for now.
The Japanese official also pointed out that countries like Germany, France and the UK already have extensive relations with North Korea that they were not talking about. British Tobacco, for example, sells North Korean Tobacco labeled as British, he said.
There is also something going on under the surface in South Korea that is related to this issue somehow. South Korean conglomerates are desperate to get their hands on South Korean Won and have been offering to trade them for yen at a two to one rate compared to the official exchange rate. They are also trying to sell old imperial South Korean gold (although they have not yet provided satisfactory proof of its existence).
This is related to a major attack on control of the South Korean banking system by Goldman Sachs, according to an executive at a Japanese securities company. It is also related, as reported in previous issues, to plans to tax the assets of South Korean residents of Japan who wish to take their yen to Korea before tax officials seize them.
The Asians all seem to be waiting for some sort of major event in the United States that will allow the map of North East Asia to be fundamentally redrawn.
The question everybody who is not brain dead or bribed is asking, of course, is when the crooks on Wall Street and in Washington D.C. will finally be rounded up and put in jail where they belong.
Some sources say the takedown has already begun. The firing of 26 generals was a start. Now the Internal Revenue Service is being taken down, they say.
The real question, of course, is when the elders of Zion are rounded up and put in jail. Never mind the debate over whether or not the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a racist forgery. The fact of the matter is that Zionism exists, it is not (but pretends to be) Judaism, and it is guilty of massive crimes against humanity.
Here is a link for those of you who still have heads in the sand over this issue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-Iyj6UPCChA
The Zionists must have leaders who could be labeled “Elders of Zion.” A senior member of the Italian P2 lodge says two names in particular are now blocking the start of the new financial system: Cohen and Levi. Chinese sources have already identified a Jean Cohen of the Hoche Group in France as having paid Chinese demonstrators 1,200 yuan a day to stage anti-Japanese riots. The Levi name is more mysterious but they will be flushed out of the woodwork sooner rather than later.
When this high-level crime syndicate is finally brought down, a redistribution of criminally obtained assets (think hedge fund, offshore, 100 times leverage, insider trading etc.) is certain to follow.
That is probably why many of the richest Americans are in a panic to take their fraudulently earned fiat dollars and turn them into hard assets as quickly as possible. That is why there is frantic buying of gold, art, real estate and anything else that actually exists in reality and not just in a bank computer.
What we are about to witness is the unraveling of a giant apparatus of lies, bribery, murder, and illusion that has fooled us into wars and out of our money for centuries. The repercussions will be historical. Imagine the fall of the Soviet Union on steroids.

ForbiddenKnowledgeTV
Alexandra Bruce
May 19, 2013

Obama displays full frontal cynicism of electoral politics and of the office of the US Presidency, itself during his comedy routine at the recent White House Correspondents'
Dinner. He speaks as a man who knows all too well what the scope of his purported power actually is.

He jokes here about how Republican billionaire, Sheldon Adelson spent $100 million to fund negative advertising about Obama during the 2012 Presidential Campaign, an amount which he jokes, "Now, that's Oprah money! You could've bought an island and named it NObama for that kind of money!

"Sheldon woulda been better offering me $100 million to drop outta the race. I probably wouldn't have taken it. But I'd have thought about it. Michelle woulda taken it..."

At the page linked below, beneath the video screen, please read Gordon Duff's assessment of the "vast criminal empire" that governs every official aspect of the United States of America.

===

Veterans Today
Gordon Duff
May 5, 2013

Over the past decades, America has planned and executed civil wars across the globe, turning nation after nation into a cesspool of blood, as “tool of foreign policy.” Now the cabal that has kept the world aflame for a lifetime or longer has now turned inward, targeting America.

Far from “conspiracy theory,” the highest levels of America’s military and intelligence are, not just aware, aided by privatization of key security functions now “outsourced” to what can only be described as America’s real enemies.

The term those assigned the hopeless task of protecting America from the vast criminal empire that has seized “the high ground” in every aspect of society and culture use to describe what may well have already destroyed America is “bifurcation.”

Deep divisions within the military, intelligence and law enforcement organizations, divisions that now extend into the hundreds of “contractor” groups run by retirees, is now nearing open warfare.

The treasonous group, calling themselves “right wing patriots,” a bizarre combination of adherents to the “Dominionist” apocalypse death cult, “middle management” of the drug cartels and Bolshevik “Neocons” totalitarians, have proven themselves willing and capable of any outrage.

TURNING AWAY FROM FREEDOM

Since the appointment of Bush (43) by the Supreme Court, a move increasingly accepted as a coup de etat by legal experts, a “nation within a nation” was established, answerable to no laws, domestic or international, no controls, no regulations, a government that faces no elections, no limitations on power, a “criminal gang” capable of waging war, controlling currencies and crashing economies.

The “Bifurcated Government of the United States,” a conglomeration of political extremists, secret societies and corporate criminals, has now turned “inward” after a decade of staging terror attacks, waging wars, looting economies and murdering millions.

GANGSTER RULE

When president Obama, last week at the White House Correspondents Dinner, spoke of Sheldon Adelson’s $100,000,000 personal “contributions” meant to buy the American presidential election, it was an admission of the “bifurcation” threat.

Who “they” can’t buy, they smear or bankrupt or imprison or murder. With control of several special operations commands and most military and “intelligence” (read “narcotics smuggling”) contractors, murders, packaged as suicides, illnesses, accidents or “street crimes,” have become commonplace.

AMERICA’S SECOND GOVERNMENT

Even the drones America has used to keep Afghanistan aflame as a cover for its $100 billion narcotics empire, stretching from Kabul to Bagdad to Dubai to Baku to Tel Aviv to Kosovo to Zurich, have now been brought home, armed and operating over America.

While the pop-culture media, very much a part of the mechanism of entropy, is tasked with its smears and deceptions, very real conspiracies, many highly classified, are now “on the radar” as a “clear and present danger” to America’s security.

Today’s story on Syria, another hoax claiming the US has announced plans for military intervention, is “business as usual” for America’s “not so secret” criminal masters.

Even when the American government refuses to accept falsified intelligence or to be bullied or blackmailed into treason, the controlled media plants hoax articles too often used as “open source intelligence” by world leaders whose “handlers” are blind to internal struggles in the US.

THE RECOGNIZED THREATS

From the list of “official” threats that can never be spoken of:

1) Five acts of terrorism against America are officially recognized, under highest security classification, as “false flag.” Among these are Oklahoma City, 9/11, Sandy Hook and Boston.

2) The United States Supreme Court is controlled, a combination of bribery, blackmail and mental instability, allowing, not just the Bush (43) coup but the suspension of all constitutional rights and full control of America’s electoral process by drug cartels. (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 -2010).

3) A Bush policy of forced integration of defense and intelligence firms with partner companies in Israel has created a “superhighway” for espionage, placing America’s most sensitive military “tech” on the world market.

4) Erosion of individual rights and a dramatic increase in unrestricted private data-mining, not just Google, but literal control of America’s communications infrastructure by foreign corporations tied to intelligence services, has quietly brought the long feared Orwellian threat to full fruition, shielded by its control of all information that would expose its capabilities and dire purpose.

5) Key defense mechanisms, originally seized by the Bush/Cheney administration and moved outside accountability have allowed extremist political groups inside the US to wage war using government resources. Most notable was the 2007 Barksdale/Minot nuclear incident where a religious cult seized a B-52 bomber armed with nine thermonuclear missiles, some of which are unaccounted.

6) Under the guise of a secret protocol with Mexico to protect both nations from powerful drug cartels, heavily armed drones have been deployed up to 1000 miles inside the US. These missions are both unauthorized by any constituted authority and quite likely represent a form of “piracy.” “Bifurcation” groups working with cartels can, at will, use these lethal systems to simulate disasters, terror plots or eliminate potential opposition.

7) Due to, not just massive political bribery through “Citizens United” but illegal redistricting called “Gerrymandering,” the US House of Representatives has been fully compromised, using its legislative role to war against America on behalf of criminal groups that now control all leadership positions in that legislative body. Their role has been to paralyze the American government, protecting the interests of the criminal elements that are, at times, themselves shocked and sickened at the excesses of American politicians whose moral and ethical standards would leave even Roman Emperor Caligula uneasy.

BACKGROUND

During the 1930s, Marine General Smedley Butler, spoke out against the use of America’s military might by organized crime. In 1934, a treasonous cabal from the American Legion (a veterans groups tied to Italy’s Mussolini), Dupont Corporation and Merrill Lynch, tried to hire Butler to lead an insurrection, arresting the president and establishing a police state under Wall Street control.

===

TheDailyConversation
April 28, 2013

President Obama taunted billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who spend $100 million on negative ads against him in the 2012 election saying, "for $100 million you could've bought an island and named it NObama!"

Watch the President's full Correspondents' Dinner comedy routine here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRD9ZXAhRK8

Watch Conan O'Brien's routine here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJvS4aTcUyQ

Subscribe to The Daily Conversation
http://bit.ly/WZnLnd

Join the conversation on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/thedailyconversation

Add TDC to your circles on Google+
https://plus.google.com/100134925804523235350/posts

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http://www.twitter.com/thedailyconvo

 

In court: Christine Lagarde

Peter Allen

23 May 2013

The head of the International Monetary Fund arrived in the dock of a Paris courtroom today as she braced herself to be formally charged with embezzlement and fraud.

Christine Lagarde’s humiliation is not only a massive personal blow which could lead to her resignation, but one which will plunge the world’s banking system into further ignominy.

The clearly nervous 57-year-old said nothing to reporters as she entered the Court of Justice of the Republic, a special tribunal set up to judge the conduct of France’s government ministers,  shortly after 8.30am.

Lagarde faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail if found guilty of the very serious charges.

It was when she was President Nicolas Sarkozy’s finance minister that she is said to have authorised a 270 million pounds payout to one of his prominent supporters, so abusing her government position.

The money went to Bernard Tapie, a convicted football match fixer and tax dodger who supported Lagarde and Sarkozy’s UMP party.

It came after Dominque Strauss-Kahn, another senior French politician, was sacked as IMF chief following allegations that he attempted to rape a chambermaid in a New York hotel.

Ms Lagarde began campaigning to succeed Mr Strauss-Kahn soon after his arrest for the alleged crime.

But now it is Ms Lagarde, a lawyer and retired synchronised swimming star, who is facing a long court process of her own, as well as a possible jail sentence.

The scandal will not only pile further shame on France’s political class, but worry politicians and bankers desperately trying to resolve the global financial crisis.

Mr Tapie, the former head of adidas in France, claims he was cheated out of millions by Credit Lyonnais bank when the sports kit empire was sold in 1993.

In 2007, Ms Largarde ended the epic dispute by ordering a panel of judges to arbitrate and, in turn, they awarded Tapie the damages.

Opposition MPs were furious, with former presidential candidate Francois Bayrou accusing Ms Lagarde of ‘dipping into the taxpayers’ pocket for a private beneficiary.’

Mr Strauss-Kahn’s Socialist Party also accused Ms Lagarde of improper conduct, pointing to the fact that Mr Tapie was a vocal supporter of Sarkozy.

Ms Lagarde’s lawyer, Yves Repiquet, said the inquiry was ‘in no way incompatible’ with her new job, and expected the case to be dismissed.

Ms Lagarde denies any wrongdoing, saying before today’s court appearance: ‘If it’s decided to continue with this inquiry it won’t be particularly surprising. Personally, it doesn’t worry me at all – I didn’t benefit personally’.

But it has been widely reported in the French media that investigators intend to charge her with fraud and embezzlement.

Le Monde said that magistrates had already written to Mrs Lagarde to tell her that she should not expect any special treatment because of her high-profile international job.

Source: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/head-of-the-imf-christine-lagarde-in-court-charged-with-embezzlement-and-fraud-8628670.html

 

The Rev. James Connell, in Sheboygan, Wis., is a member of Catholic Whistleblowers.

By Laurie Goodstein, New York Times – May 20, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/us/catholic-church-whistle-blowers-join-forces-on-abuse

They call themselves Catholic Whistleblowers, a newly formed cadre of priests and nuns who say the Roman Catholic Church is still protecting sexual predators.

Several members of the group, which includes priests and nuns, met in Manhattan last week.

Although they know they could face repercussions, they have banded together to push the new pope to clean house and the American bishops to enforce the zero-tolerance policies they adopted more than a decade ago.

The group began organizing quietly nine months ago without the knowledge of their superiors or their peers, and plan to make their campaign public this week. Most in the steering group of 12 have blown the whistle on abusers in the past, and three are canon lawyers who once handled abuse cases on the church’s behalf. Four say they were sexually abused as children.

Their aim, they say, is to support both victims and fellow whistle-blowers, and identify shortcomings in church policies. They hope to help not just minors, but also adults who fall prey to clergy who exploit their power for sex. They say that their motivation is to make the church better and safer, and to show the world that there are good priests and nuns in the church.

“We’ve dedicated our lives to the church,” the Rev. John Bambrick, a priest in the Diocese of Trenton, said at a meeting of the group last week in New York. “Having sex offenders in ministry is damaging to our ministry.”

The group has sent a letter to Pope Francis asking him to take several significant steps to heal victims and restore the church’s credibility: revoke all oaths of secrecy, open the files on abuse cases, remove from office any bishops who obstructed justice and create an international forum for dialogue between survivors and church leaders.

The Catholic Church in the United States put in place a zero-tolerance policy and a host of prevention programs after the abuse scandal peaked in 2002. Each year the bishops commission an audit of abuse cases, and this year’s survey, released May 9, found the fewest allegations and victims since the audits began in 2004.

But the whistle-blowers’ group contends that vigilance is necessary because some bishops are violating the zero-tolerance policies, and abusive clergy (who now number 6,275, according to the bishops’ count of those accusations that they deem credible) still have access to children.

They point to the revelations in the last month that a priest in Newark who was a convicted sex offender restricted by a court order from working with children had been ministering in a Catholic parish in Trenton, taking confessions from children and going on weekend youth retreats.

Several of the whistle-blowers have been vocal about that priest, the Rev. Michael Fugee. Along with some New Jersey politicians, they have called for the resignation of the archbishop of Newark, John J. Myers. They fault Archbishop Myers not only for failing to restrict Father Fugee, but also for appointing him to help direct the education of priests in the archdiocese.

Archbishop Myers’s spokesman said the archbishop was unaware of the priest’s activities, and is cooperating with an investigation by the Bergen County prosecutor. Father Fugee left the ministry, and on Monday was arrested on charges that he violated a judicial order by having contact with minors. The bishop of Trenton, David M. O’Connell, removed another priest and two youth ministers from the parish in Trenton where Father Fugee worked with youth.

The Newark case, as well as the release of personnel records on priests by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and convictions of church officials in Philadelphia and Kansas City, convinced the whistle-blowers’ group that they have work to do despite the optimistic picture in the bishops’ audits. They do not consider the bishops’ audits credible because they are based on self-reporting.

The group discussed the latest scandal in Newark at a meeting last week in Manhattan. At that meeting, Sister Sally Butler traveled from Brooklyn; Sister Maureen Paul Turlish from Delaware; the Rev. Ronald Lemmert from Peekskill, N.Y.; and Father Bambrick, Msgr. Kenneth E. Lasch and Robert Hoatson, a former priest, came from New Jersey.

The Rev. James Connell joined in by speakerphone from Sheboygan, Wis. (The Rev. Thomas P. Doyle — perhaps the church’s most famed whistle-blower — recently joined the group but could not attend.) They had been conducting their weekly meetings by conference calls, and it was only the second time most of them had met face to face.

Each member has a history of standing up publicly on behalf of abuse victims, but until last year most of them did not know of one another. A Catholic laywoman, Anne Barrett Doyle, who lives in Boston, suggested they should meet. She is the co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a Web site and advocacy group that is building a database of documents on clergy abuse cases, and a co-worker, Suzy Nauman, had been keeping a running list of priests and nuns who had helped expose predators or had spoken out.

Last year Ms. Doyle spoke with Father Lemmert about the backlash he experienced after exposing a case in New York, and he later told her that talking about his experiences was “very therapeutic.” The group was initially conceived more as a confidential support group for the whistle-blowers themselves.

“I joined the group,” said Father Lemmert, “because I had been badly ostracized because I blew the whistle. There was no support out there, and this group has been a lifeline.”

Until last week, he intended to keep his involvement in the group under wraps for fear of repercussions. But at the meeting Father Lemmert announced, “I just decided to stand up and be counted.”

The group has evolved to take on a more policy-oriented role, drafting the letter to the new pope with six suggestions for action. They sent the letter in late April to the pope and several Vatican officials, but have not received any response yet.

They expressed varying degrees of optimism about whether Pope Francis will follow through on the goal first articulated by Pope John Paul II that there is no room for sexual abusers in the priesthood. They noted that Pope Francis recently said that all human beings must be protected with “clarity and courage” — especially children, “who are the most vulnerable.”

Monsignor Lasch said to the group, “The pope has asked us to speak with clarity and courage, and that’s what we’ve done with him.” Mr. Hoatson added, “It’s time that clarity and courage are rewarded rather than harassed and dismissed.”

Mr. Hoatson and Monsignor Lasch founded Road to Recovery, a group that assists abuse victims, but Mr. Hoatson left the priesthood in 2011 after a series of run-ins with Archbishop Myers. He said he has found the recent spotlight trained on the Newark archbishop very encouraging.

The whistle-blowers’ group plans to hold its first news conference this week in New York, and some members are bracing for the reaction. They said they know priests who spoke up and were removed from their parishes, hustled into retirement or declared “unstable” and sent to treatment centers for clergy with substance-abuse problems or sexual addictions.

As for what they hope to accomplish, the whistle-blowers had very different answers.

“That all the children in our church would be safe,” said Father Bambrick.

“That the people who covered up would go to jail,” said Sister Butler.

“That’s not what I’m in this for,” said Monsignor Lasch. “I’m in this for justice and mercy and truth and compassion.”

Posted by sage on May 23, 2013

sage:  Although the title of this article proclaims that the rendition program belongs to the US Government, it’s widely known it’s run almost solely by the CIA. Until now, it’s also been highly secretive – but lately, whistleblowers have let out just enough information to allow the ball to be picked up by other interested groups.  At the end I’ve posted two, separate links which explain the rendition flights in detail and incorporate an interactive map. 

By Ian Cobain and James Ball, The Guardian – May 22, 2013

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/22/us-extraordinary-rendition-programme

Online project uncovers details of way in which CIA carried out kidnaps and secret detentions following September 11 attacks.

A groundbreaking research project has mapped the US government’s global kidnap and secret detention programme, shedding unprecedented light on one of the most controversial secret operations of recent years.

The interactive online project – by two British universities and a legal charity – has uncovered new details of the way in which the so-called extraordinary rendition programme operated for years in the wake of the September 11 attacks, and the techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to avoid detection in the face of growing public concern.

The Rendition Project website is intended to serve as a research tool that not only collates all the publicly available data about the programme, but can continue to be updated as further information comes to light.

Data already collated shows the full extent of the UK’s logistical support for the programme: aircraft associated with rendition operations landed at British airports more than 1,600 times.

Although no detainees are known to have been aboard the aircraft while they were landing in the UK, the CIA was able to refuel during operations that involved some of the most notorious renditions of the post-September 11 years, including one in which two men were kidnapped in Sweden and flown to Egypt, where they suffered years of torture, and others that involved detainees being flown to and from a secret prison in Romania.

The database also tracks rendition flights into and out of Diego Garcia, in the Chagos Islands, and suggests that flight crews enjoyed rest-and-recreation stopovers on the Turks and Caicos Islands. Both are British overseas territories.

The Rendition Project is the result of three years of work, funded by the UK taxpayer through the Economic and Social Research Council, by Ruth Blakeley, a senior lecturer at the University of Kent, and Sam Raphael, a senior lecturer at Kingston University, working with Crofton Black, an investigator with the legal charity Reprieve.

“By bringing together a vast collection of documents and data, the Rendition Project publishes the most detailed picture to date of the scale, operation and evolution of the global system of rendition and secret detention in the so-called war on terror,” said Blakeley.

Raphael said: “The database makes a major contribution to efforts to track CIA rendition flights, and provides the clearest picture so far of what was going on. It also serves as an important tool for investigators, journalists and lawyers to delve into in more detail.”

Black added: “The Rendition Project lays bare the inner workings of the logistics network underlying the US government’s secret prison programme. It’s the most accurate and comprehensive resource so far published.”

The data includes details on 11,006 flights by aeroplanes linked to the CIA’s rendition programme since 2002. Of those, 1,556 flights are classed as confirmed or suspected rendition flights, or flagged as “suspicious”, depending on the strength of the supporting evidence surrounding each.

The researchers have also confirmed 20 “dummy” flights within the data: flight paths logged with air traffic controllers, but never taken. Instead, the planes took a different route to different airports along the way, to pick up or drop off a detainee. About a dozen more flight paths are marked as possible dummy flights.

The website also weaves together first-hand testimony of detainees of their mistreatment within the secret prisons; the layout and conditions of the facilities; the movements of detainees across the globe; and documents that detail outsourcing to corporations that offered logistical support, from flights to catering and hotel reservations. In some cases, it is unclear whether the airline companies would have been aware of the purpose of the flights.

The project also brings to light new information on the methods used to avoid detection of rendition flights, particularly as journalists became aware of the programme. The project highlights “tarmac transfers” – occasions on which two planes involved in rendition met on remote airfields. The researchers believe these occasions were used to transfer detainees from one plane to another, making their rendition route far more difficult to track.

Among the prisoners who appear to have been switched from one aircraft to another in this way is Abu Faraj al-Libi, who is currently being held at the Guantánamo detention camp in Cuba. After being captured in Pakistan in May 2005, he appears to have been flown to Afghanistan, where he was switched to another aircraft and taken to Bucharest.

Further reading:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2013/may/22/rendition-flights-graphic-explained

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2013/may/22/rendition-flights-cia-mapped

(NaturalNews) Voters in Portland, Oregon solidly defeated a city-wide water fluoridation measure yesterday, with 60% of the voters saying "NO!" to the practice of adding toxic fluoride chemicals to the water.

The result is a huge victory for www.CleanWaterPortland.org and all the men, women and children of Portland who can now rest easier, knowing their tap water is not intentionally poisoned with cancer-causing chemicals derived from industrial waste and mislabeled "fluoride."

The defeat of the measure absolutely infuriated fluoride-pushing doctors and dentists, many of whom resorted to using outrageous lies and dirty tricks during the entire campaign. These lies include whoppers like, "Drinking fluoride has never harmed anyone" and "this is naturally-occurring fluoride, therefore it's safe."
 

Fluoride advocates reject real science

Nowhere is there a more obscene departure from real science than in the "scientific" community of fluoride pushers. These people very well know that all sorts of "naturally-occurring" elements in the table of elements are extremely toxic to the human body. Mercury is toxic, yet it occurs naturally. Arsenic is highly toxic, yet it occurs naturally as well. I dare any of these fluoride pushers to chug a glass containing lead or cadmium.

To claim that fluoride is healthful merely because it is found in water wells and the Earth's crust is an outrageously evil deception. Fluoride POISONS water wells around the world, and populations go to great lengths to try to remove it from their water! Fluoride pushers know this, but they seem to be determined to make sure as many people as possible are harmed through fluoridation, possibly as a way to make sure there's more medical business in the future due to toxic fluoride side effects.
 

"Fluoride" is actually a toxic combination of chemicals and heavy metals

Most of the fluoride dumped into U.S. water supplies, by the way, is imported from China. And it just happens to be heavily contaminated with lead, arsenic, cadmium and other toxic metals. No city in the United States tests its fluoride for these contaminants and openly publicizes the results. It's all one big toxic secret, and the doctors and dentists who support fluoridation want to make sure it stays that way.

Shhh! Science isn't allowed when we discuss fluoride! You're supposed to just buy into the "cult" of it, without asking any scientific questions.

But even environmental groups understand this stuff is highly toxic. "...there is no safe exposure level for arsenic and lead," said Antonia Giedwoyn, a Sierra Club spokeswoman in Portland. "Why would we want to add any level of heavy metals to our water, that our kids and our parents and we ourselves drink?" (SOURCE).
 

Fluoridation proponents are some of the most dangerous, life-hating people you'll ever meet

By the way, in my more than ten years of being an investigative reporter, activist and pioneer in online health news and information, I have never met a more arrogant, insidious and life-hating group of people than those who push for water fluoridation. Across the board, these people behave like psychopathic criminals who want to unleash death and destruction across every city in the world. They are very much like the "mad scientists" that Batman defeats in major motion pictures. They've abandoned any desire to listen to reason or logic, and they don't even recognize real science anymore.

They remind me of Dr. Gosnell, the abortionist doctor in Philadelphia who would murder babies after they were born alive by severing their spinal columns with scissors. He called it "post-birth abortion" with the same level of evil arrogance that doctors in Portland used to call mass poisoning "water fluoridation." I am absolutely convinced that if you gave some of these fluoride-pushing doctors a couple of pairs of scissors, they would run around Portland stabbing infants in the neck if they thought they could get away with it. They might even call it something like, "Pre-emptive brain cancer prevention."
 

"Fluoride" is often imported from China and laced with heavy metals

By the way, Natural News has already documented that much of the "fluoride" used in U.S. cities is actually an insecticide imported from China.

Here's some of the text used by Chinese chemical manufacturers to promote their "fluoride" to U.S. cities that buy this stuff and dump it into the water supply:

From the Shanghai Polymet Commodities Ltd. company in China:

Fluosilicic Acid / hydrofluosilicic acid:

Property: Colorless, transparent and smoky liquid with penetrating odor; highly acidic; soluble in water and volatile; with disinfecting action; corrosive to glass, ceramics, lead and other metals; highly corrosive to human skin and harmful to people's respiratory organs; keep it in a container made of plastics.

Another industrial fluoride supplier from China describes its sodium fluoride as:

...used as anti-corrosion agent in wood, medical corrosion, fusing in welding... manufacture of rimmed steel, treatment of hides and skins for leather industry, adhesive preservative, purification and coloring flux in the melting of light metals.

Oh yeah, and your idiot doctor wants you to drink it, too... right before he stabs you in the arm with a vaccine that also contains heavy metals.

Learn more:
www.cleanwaterportland.org

Posted by sage on May 22, 2013

sage:  While this article could be seen to be ridiculing ‘conspiracy theorists’, it is in a mainstream news outlet and does list some of the Bilderberg group’s intended subjects of discussion – which, to me, only solidifies the notion of their dark agenda. The story also lists Bilderbergers of the past that we know are, or have been, members of the elite or cabal,  and suggests that some of the younger Bilderbergers are uncomfortable with the group’s closed-door media policy and want to be more open. Which makes me wonder, is this a result of being in containment?   Stephen adds: I also note that this year’s Bilderberg meeting begins on 6/6/2013 (6/6/6 – 2+0+1+3=6). Is anything really a coincidence?

By James Cusick, The Independent – May 21, 2013

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/watch-out-watford-here-comes-the-secretive-bilderberg-group

A meeting of global power brokers in a Hertfordshire hotel is exciting conspiracy theorists, but what are they really about?

Whether it’s the shape-shifting group of reptilian descendants from the constellation Draco who control humanity, or the shadowy cabal of powerful financiers and politicians who covertly run all governments, conspiracy theorists are once again preparing for their annual jamboree of protest against those who really rule the world, this year in the highly secretive destination of… Watford.

For three days beginning on 6 June, a five-star hotel in Chandler’s Cross that normally hosts the England football team before Wembley matches, will turn over its 227 luxury rooms and 300-acre estate grounds to the über-secretive Bilderberg Group.

The Grove, once the home of the earls of Clarendon where prime ministers such as Palmerston and Walpole were guests and where a young Queen Victoria started the fashion for “the weekend break”, will turn back the clock when it welcomes around 140 of Europe and America’s most powerful leaders from banking, finance and politics with a scattering of royalty and aristocracy adding to the elite guest list.

Due to a tradition that stretches back to 1954 and the first conference held at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek in the Netherlands, nothing that is discussed or agreed at a Bilderberg meeting is reported. Until recently even the names of those who were invited was kept secret.

That tradition, however, according to discreet soundings made by The Independent on Sunday, could be about to change with the new generation of Bilderbergers, who are apparently uncomfortable with the total exclusion of the media.

The conference is the only “activity” of the secretive Bilderberg Group. The list of participants usually includes former US presidents, soon-to-be presidents, UK prime ministers-in-waiting, finance ministers from the leading Western democracies, and presidents of organisations such as the World Bank and the bosses of the largest multinational corporations.

Clinton, Blair, Bushes senior and junior, Cameron, Osborne, Kissinger, Bill Gates and, strangely, Peter Mandelson, have all been Bilderberg invitees in recent years.

Putting a global elite all in one place, and banning any media from attending or reporting what has been said, has led to a vast industry of wild conspiracy which suggests Bilderberg is a “world government meeting in the shadows”.

Watford, if the conspiracy theorists are correct, will be the place where the locations of the next wars are decided and where the next global pandemics will be created to boost the profits of the giant pharmaceutical industries. And forget democracy and ballot boxes – Watford will be where the next leaders of major world powers are actually anointed.

The masses expected to travel to Watford to protest at Bilderberg’s alleged grand design of one world government, centralised foreign policy, global obedience, enslavement, and global tax strategy, appear not to be worrying Hertfordshire Police.

“We’ve experience of dealing with these things,” said a force spokesman, “Some of our senior officers went to the G8 at Gleneagles – we’ve a resilient set-up.”

The force were less than pleased when Watford’s elected mayor, Dorothy Thornhill, warned that the town should be prepared for violent protests. “That was less than helpful,” said one officer. “But she’s revisited her comments. This is being blown up to be a bit bigger than it’s going to be.”

Nevertheless, specialist officers from the Metropolitan Police are being drafted in to assist a combined team from Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridge constabularies who are advanced in their preparations for Bilderberg 2013.

Five pitches belonging to the Fullerians Rugby Club, which backs on to The Grove estate, will be used as the police’s security headquarters for the three days of Bilderberg. “We’d no idea why the police wanted to hire the entire club,” said one Fullerians’ committee member. “But the season is finished, so we didn’t care. We took their money. But if we still had games left, then world government or not, we’d have said find somewhere else.”

Hertfordshire Police would make no comment on the potential security implications of discovering “giant lizards” in the grounds of The Grove. The throwaway line was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the belief of leading New Age conspiracy guru, David Icke.

The former BBC presenter has written about the “Babylonian Brotherhood” of “inter-stellar reptilian humanoids” whose bloodline now includes US presidents, UK and Canadian prime ministers; with the House of Windsor described by Icke as “seriously reptilian”.

Icke has suggested that the Bilderberg Group, along with Illuminati, Chatham House, the IMF and the UN, all have a goal of world domination by micro-chipping the world’s population.

“Reporters” from some of the US’s most visited conspiracy websites, have already visited The Grove and claim the 2013 agenda will be focusing on “intellistreet” surveillance technology that can spy on populations 24/7; how the democratisation of 3-D printing of guns must be stopped; and how new strains of bird flu will be used to boost profits of leading drugs companies.

Although those who attend Bilderberg Group gatherings are sworn to secrecy, the Independent on Sunday spoke to a number of delegates who had attended some of the gatherings over the last four years. One, a UK politician, said: “It really is not that exciting, in fact it’s a bit run of the mill.” He compared it to the annual World Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Another delegate said that most of the three days was taken up by “intense plenary sessions that focused on major global issues – but a lot of the most valued contact centred on informal lunch chats”.

Although the tradition of confidentiality was mostly defended, another diplomatic delegate said the younger generation of Bilderberg guests felt different about how useful the closed-door approach had become and were uncomfortable with the policy of total media exclusion. He said : “I sympathise with those who tell us the confidentiality policy only encourages the conspiracy theorists. It does.”

Earlier this year a number of privacy organizations raised alarms about the way Microsoft shared Skype users' private information. Now, a new report suggests that Microsoft itself is closely monitoring messages sent between Skype users.

Technology blog Ars Technica says it has learned that Microsoft is actively scanning messages containing HTTPS URLS, or URLs associated with secure websites.

Microsoft Monitoring, Storing Links

Ars writer Dan Goodin says he's also learned that Microsoft is scanning these messages as a form of fraud prevention and that the firm is logging the results for an indefinite period of time. (Source: arstechnica.com)

To test this report, Ars and an independent security researcher named Ashkan Soltani sent four web links using the Skype chat feature. Further research showed that two of the four links were intercepted and clicked on.

Furthermore, Goodin and Soltani found that the person who clicked on the links was associated with an IP address known to belong to Microsoft.

In the past, Skype has claimed that it only monitors messages in an effort to prevent junk mail from being sent to legitimate users.

"Skype uses automated scanning within instant messages to identify unwanted messaging and identify website addresses that have been previously flagged as spam, fraud, or phishing links," noted James Blamey, a Skype spokesperson. (Source: pcworld.com)

However, it would now appear that Microsoft's monitoring of Skype goes far beyond that.

The Irony: Not So Delicious

Industry insiders rightly point out the remarkable irony of this practice, given that Microsoft has recently carried on a "Scroogled" campaign designed to embarrass Google for allegedly monitoring Gmail messages.

In any case, Soltani says he's alarmed by these most recent findings. "If [Microsoft is] monitoring URLs in chat, what else can they monitor? Can they record all your chats?"

"Up to now, we haven't had data to show that Microsoft has this capability," Soltani said. "This shows that."

Source: http://www.infopackets.com/news/business/microsoft/2013/20130522_microsoft_snooping_on_skype_messages_report.htm

Published on 22 May 2013 by RussiaToday

Meanwhile, as the US government's apparent war on whistle-blowers gathers pace, some media outlets are taking steps to shield their sources. The New Yorker has launched a system that allows people to anonymously submit leaked documents and messages to the magazine. RT's Marina Portnaya reports.

Souce: The Contrail

Dark History of the Evil Monsanto Corporation

Monsanto is the world's leading producer of the herbicide "Roundup", as well as producing 90% of the world's genetically modified (GMO) seeds.

Over Monsanto's 110-year history (1901-2013), Monsanto Co (MON.N), the world's largest seed company, has evolved from primarily an industrial chemical concern into a pure agricultural products company. MON profited $2 billion dollars in 2009, but their record profits fell to only $1 billion in 2010 after activists exposed Monsanto for doing terribly evil acts like suing good farmers and feeding uranium to pregnant women. Below is a timeline of Monsanto's dark history.

Monsanto, best know today for its agricultural biotechnology GMO products, has a long and dirty history of polluting this country and others with some of the most toxic compounds known to humankind. From PCBs to Agent Orange to Roundup, we have many reasons to question the motives of this evil corporation that claims to be working to reduce environmental destruction and feed the world with its genetically engineered GMO food crops. Monsanto has been repeatedly fined and ruled against for, among many things: mislabeling containers of Roundup, failing to report health data to EPA, plus chemical spills and improper chemical deposition.

The name Monsanto has since, for many around the world, come to symbolize the greed, arrogance, scandal and hardball business practices of many multinational corporations. A couple of historical factoids not generally known: Monsanto was heavily involved during WWII in the creation of the first nuclear bomb for the Manhattan Project via its facilities in Dayton Ohio and called the Dayton Project headed by Charlie Thomas, Director of Monsanto's Central Research Department (and later Monsanto President) and it operated a nuclear facility for the federal government in Miamisburg, also in Ohio, called the Mound Project until the 80s.

 

Monsanto Company History Overview

Monsanto is a US based agricultural and pharmaceutical monopoly, Monsanto Company is a producer of herbicides, prescription pharmaceutical drugs, and genetically engineered (GMO) seeds. The global Monsanto corporation has operated sales offices, manufacturing plants, and research facilities in more than 100 countries. Monsanto has the largest share of the global GMO crops market. In 2001 its crops accounted for 91% of the total area of GMO crops planted worldwide. Based on 2001 figures Monsanto was the second biggest seed company in the world, and the third biggest agrochemical company.

Historically Monsanto has been involved with the production of PCBs, DDT, dioxins and the defoliant / chemical weapon ‘Agent Orange' (sprayed on American troops and Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War). Originally a chemical company, Until the late 1990s Monsanto was a much larger ‘lifesciences' company whose business covered chemicals, polymers, food additives and pharmaceuticals, as well as agricultural products.

All of these other chemical business areas have now been demerged or sold off. Monsanto sold its chemical business in 1997 to build a presence in biotechnology, developing NON-ORGANIC GMO soybeans and corn (classified as a pesticide and banned in the EU) to resist the poisonous effects of its Roundup herbicide. Monsanto's key business areas are now agrochemicals, seeds and traits (including GMO crops), Monsanto also produced NutraSweet, a GMO sugar substitute. Monsanto recently sold it's GMO bovine growth hormones monopoly to Eli Lilly, and sold it's aspartame business to Pfizer.

Monsanto's business is currently run in two parts: Agricultural Productivity, and Seeds and Genomics. The Agricultural Productivity segment includes Roundup herbicide and other agri-chemicals, and the Animal Agriculture business. The Seeds and Genomics segment consists of seed companies and related biotechnology traits, and a technology platform based on plant genomics. In reality of course these two segments are inseparable, since the agri-chemicals are becoming increasingly dependent on the seeds segment for sales.

 

Monsanto's Early 20th-Century Origins

Monsanto traces its roots to John Francisco Queeny, a purchaser for a wholesale drug house at the turn of the century, who formed the Monsanto Chemical Works in St. Louis, Missouri, in order to produce the artificial sweetener saccharin for Coca-Cola.

John Francis Queeny (August 17, 1859 - March 19, 1933) started work at age 12 for a wholesale drug company, Tolman and King. He attended school for 6 years until the Great Chicago Fire forced him, at the age of 12, to look for full-time employment, which he found with Tolman and King for $2.50 per week.

In 1891, he moved to St. Louis to work for Meyer Brothers Drug Company. John was inducted into the Knights of Malta order. His first business, a sulfur refinery in East St.Louis, was destroyed by fire on its first day of operation in 1899. The process of refining beet sugar in 1900, led to Monsanto Corporation's first artificial sweetener, the following year. Butter substitute, MSG and partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening were all soon to follow.

John Francis Queeny married Olga Mendez Monsanto with whom he had two children, one of whom was Edgar Monsanto Queeny, who would later serve as Chairman. n 1901, John then established his own chemical company to produce the sweetener, saccharin, which was only available in Germany at that time. He named the company Monsanto after his wife´s maiden name, Olga Monsanto Queeny.

Queeny was a member of the Missouri Historical Society and was a director of the Lafayette-South Side Bank and Trust Company. "He was also known for his many philanthropic endeavors." [Final Resting Place, p. 83, The St. Louis Portrait, p. 221]

Knight of Malta John F. Queeny: Founder of Monsanto

According to the Count in Venice, John Francis Queeny (founder of The Monsanto Company) was a Knight of Malta. Irish-American ROMAN Catholic Queeny (1859-1933) founded Monsanto in 1901 within the Jesuit stronghold of St. Lewis - hosting the Black Pope’s Saint Louis University since 1818.

This is the same year J. P. Morgan, Papal Knight of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, founded U.S. Steel Corporation and in 1911 would appoint Knight of Malta John A. Farrell as its president. Interesting: Queeny, Morgan and Farrell were all wicked, pope-serving, White Gentiles - not a Jew in the mix!

Robert B. Shapiro was Monsanto’s CEO from 1995 to 2000. The devil’s Great Conspiracy for world government must always appear to be led by Jews, never by the Pope of Rome using select, Masonic "Court Jews" as his underlings!

Once the manufacturer of the now outlawed DDT and Agent Orange during Francis Cardinal Spellman’s CIA-directed Vietnam War, the company also developed and now markets bovine growth hormone, further poisoning the food chain here in America. It is most intriguing that Europe - the pope’s Revived Holy Roman Empire deceptively called "The European Union" - refuses to purchase beef produced in the United States!

Upon purchasing G. D. Searle and Company in 1985, Monsanto, via its NutraSweet Company, is the manufacturer of Aspartame, the notorious neuro-toxin sold to the public as an artificial sweetener. Aspartame is the "artificial sweetener" in the soft drink "Diet Pepsi," Pepisico once employing JFK assassin / FBI liaison to the Warren Commission and Knight of Malta Cartha D. DeLoach.

Monsanto also has strong ties to The Walt Disney Company, with financial backing from the Order’s Bank of America founded in Jesuit-ruled San Francisco by Italian-American ROMAN Catholic Knight of Malta Amadeo Giannini in 1904. Disney owns ABC Television Network and its Director Emeritus is Roy Disney (brother of the late Walt Disney) who was inducted into the Knights of St. Gregory during the same ceremony with Fox Network owner Rupert Murdoch. ABC and Fox are both controlled by Rome through brother Knights of the Order of St. Gregory!

World War I: Petrochemicals

While prior to World War I America relied heavily on foreign supplies of chemicals, the increasing likelihood of U.S. intervention meant that the country would soon need its own domestic producer of chemicals. Looking back on the significance of the war for Monsanto, Queeny's son Edgar remarked, "There was no choice other than to improvise, to invent and to find new ways of doing all the old things. The old dependence on Europe [Hitler's IG Farben in Nazi Germany] was, almost overnight, a thing of the past." Among other problems, Monsanto researchers discovered that pages describing German chemical processes had been ripped out of library books. Monsanto developed several pharmaceutical products, including phenol as an antiseptic, in addition to acetylsalicyclic acid, or aspirin.

Under Edgar Queeny's direction Monsanto, now the Monsanto Chemical Company, began to substantially expand and enter into an era of prolonged growth. Acquisitions expanded Monsanto's product line to include the new field of petrochemical plastics and the manufacture of phosphorus.

 

Postwar Expansion & New Leadership

Largely unknown by the public, Monsanto experienced difficulties in attempting to market consumer goods. However, attempts to refine a low-quality detergent led to developments in grass fertilizer, an important consumer product since the postwar housing boom had created a strong market of homeowners eager to perfect their lawns.

Under Hanley, Monsanto more than doubled its sales and earnings between 1972 and 1983. Toward the end of his tenure, Hanley put into effect a promise he had made to himself and to Monsanto when he accepted the position of president, namely, that his successor would be chosen from Monsanto's ranks. Hanley and his staff chose approximately 20 young executives as potential company leaders and began preparing them for the head position at Monsanto. Among them was Richard J. Mahoney. When Hanley joined Monsanto, Mahoney was a young sales director in agricultural products. In 1983 Hanley turned the leadership of the company over to Mahoney. Wall Street immediately approved this decision with an increase in Monsanto's share prices.

1976, Monsanto announced plans to phase out production of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB).

In 1979 a lawsuit was filed against Monsanto and other manufacturers of agent orange, a defoliant used during the Vietnam War. Agent orange contained a highly-toxic chemical known as dioxin, and the suit claimed that hundreds of veterans had suffered permanent damage because of the chemical. In 1984 Monsanto and seven other manufacturers agreed to a $180 million settlement just before the trial began. With the announcement of a settlement Monsanto's share price, depressed because of the uncertainty over the outcome of the trial, rose substantially.

Also in 1984, Monsanto lost a $10 million antitrust suit to Spray-Rite, a former distributor of Monsanto agricultural herbicides. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the suit and award, finding that Monsanto had acted to fix retail prices with other herbicide manufacturers.

In August 1985, Monsanto purchased G. D. Searle, the "NutraSweet" firm. NutraSweet, an artificial sweetener, had generated $700 million in sales that year, and Searle could offer Monsanto an experienced marketing and a sales staff as well as real profit potential - not to mention the fact that Searle's CEO Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was well-connected among a cabal of corrupt politicians in Washington DC. Since the late 1970s the company had sold nearly 60 low-margin businesses and, with two important agriculture product patents expiring in 1988, a major new cash source was more than welcome. What Monsanto didn't count on, however, was the controversy surrounding Searle's intrauterine birth control device called the Copper-7.

Soon after the acquisition, disclosures about hundreds of lawsuits over Searle's IUD surfaced and turned Monsanto's takeover into a public relations disaster. The disclosures, which inevitably led to comparisons with those about A. H. Robins, the Dalkan Shield manufacturer that eventually declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, raised questions as to how carefully Monsanto management had considered the acquisition. In early 1986 Searle discontinued IUD sales in the United States. By 1988 Monsanto's new subsidiary faced an estimated 500 lawsuits against the Copper-7 IUD. As the parent company, Monsanto was well insulated from its subsidiary's liabilities by the legal "corporate veil".

Toward the end of the 1980s, Monsanto faced continued challenges from a variety of sources, including government and public concern over hazardous wastes, fuel and feedstock costs, and import competition. At the end of the 99th Congress, then President Ronald Reagan signed a $8.5 billion, five-year cleanup superfund reauthorization act. Built into the financing was a surcharge on the chemical industry created through the tax reform bill. Biotechnology regulations were just being formulated, and Monsanto, which already had types of genetically engineered bacteria ready for testing, was poised to be an active participant in the GMO biotech field.

In keeping with its strategy to become a leader in the health field, Monsanto and the Washington University Medical School entered into a five-year research contract in 1984. Two-thirds of the research was to be directed into areas with obviously commercial applications, while one-third of the research was to be devoted to theoretical work. One particularly promising discovery involved the application of the bovine growth factor, MARKETED as a way to greatly increase milk production.

In the burgeoning low-calorie sweetener market, challengers to NutraSweet were putting pressure on Monsanto. Pfizer Inc., a pharmaceutical company, was preparing to market its product, called alitame, which it claimed was far sweeter than NutraSweet and better suited for baking.

In an interview with Business Week, senior vice-president for research and development Howard Schneiderman commented, "To maintain our markets - and not become another steel industry - we must spend on research and development." Monsanto, which has committed 8% of its operating budget to research and development, far above the industry average, hoped to emerge in the 1990s as one of the leaders in the fields of biotechnology and pharmaceuticals that are only now emerging from their nascent stage.

By the end of the 1980s, Monsanto had restructured itself and become a producer of specialty chemicals, with a focus on biotechnology products. Monsanto enjoyed consecutive record years in 1988 and 1989 - sales were $8.3 billion and $8.7 billion, respectively. In 1988 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Cytotec, a drug that prevents gastric ulcers in high-risk cases. Sales of Cytotec in the United States reached $39 million in 1989.

The Monsanto Chemical Co. unit prospered with products like Saflex, a type of nylon carpet fiber. The NutraSweet Company held its own in 1989, contributing $180 million in earnings, with growth in the carbonated beverage segment (which Monsanto originated from since 1901 seed money from Coca-Cola to produce carcinogenic Saccharin). Almost 500 new products containing NutraSweet were introduced in 1989, for a total of 3,000 products.

Monsanto continued to invest heavily in research and development, with 7% of sales allotted for R&D. The investment began to pay off when the research and development department developed an all-natural fat substitute called Simplesse. The FDA declared in early 1990 that the Simplesse product was "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS) for use in frozen desserts. That year, the NutraSweet Company introduced Simple Pleasures frozen dairy dessert. Monsanto hoped to see Simplesse used eventually in salad dressings, yogurt, and mayonnaise.

Despite these successes, Monsanto remained frustrated by delays in obtaining FDA approval for bovine somatotropin (BST), a hormore chemical MARKETED to increase milk production in cows that causes mastitis (pus milk). Opponents to BST said it would upset the balance of supply and demand for milk, but Monsanto countered that BST would provide high-quality food supplies to consumers worldwide.

The final year of the 1980s also marked Monsanto's listing for the first time on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Monsanto officials expected the listing to improve opportunities for licensing and joint venture agreements.

 

Monsanto's Early 1990s Transitional Period

Monsanto had expected to celebrate 1990 as its 5th consecutive year of increased earnings, but numerous factors - the increased price of OIL due to the Persian Gulf War, a recession in key industries in the United States, and droughts in California and Europe — prevented Monsanto from achieving this goal. Net income was $546 million, a dramatic drop from the record of $679 the previous year. Nonetheless, subsidiary Searle, which had experienced considerable public relations scandals and headaches in the 1980s, had a record financial year in 1990. The subsidiary had established itself in the global pharmaceutical market and was beginning to emerge as an industry leader. The Monsanto Chemical Co., meanwhile, was a $4 billion business that made up the largest percentage of Monsanto's sales.

Monsanto continued to work at upholding hypocritical "The Monsanto Pledge", a 1988 declaration to reduce emissions of toxic substances. By its own estimates, Monsanto devoted $285 million annually to environmental expenditures. Furthermore, Monsanto and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agreed to a cleanup program at Monsanto's detergent and phosphate plant in Richmond County, Georgia.

Monsanto restructured during the early 1990s to help cut losses during a difficult economic time. Net income in 1991 was only $296 million, $250 million less than the previous year. Despite this showing, 1991 was a good year for some of Monsanto's newest products. Bovine somatotropin finally gained FDA approval and was sold in Mexico and Brazil, and Monsanto received the go-ahead to use the fat substitute, Simplesse, in a full range of food products, including yogurt, cheese and cheese spreads, and other low-fat spreads. In addition, the herbicide Dimension was approved in 1991, and scientists at Monsanto controversially tested genetically engineered (GE or GMO) plants in field trials.

Furthermore, Monsanto expanded internationally, opening an office in Shanghai and a plant in Beijing, China. Monsanto also hoped to expand in Thailand, and entered into a joint venture in Japan with Mitsubishi Chemical Co.

Monsanto's sales in 1992 hit $7.8 million. However, as net income dropped 130% from 1991 due to several one-time aftertax charges, Monsanto prepared itself for challenging times. The patent on NutraSweet brand sweetener expired in 1992, and in preparation for increased competition, Monsanto launched new products, such as the NutraSweet Spoonful, which came in tabletop serving jars, like sugar. Monsanto also devoted ongoing research and development to Sweetener 2000, a high-intensity product.

In 1992, Monsanto denied that it planned to sell G. D. Searle and Co., pointing out that Searle was a profitable subsidiary that launched many new products. However, to decrease losses, Monsanto did sell Fisher Controls International Inc., a subsidiary that manufactures process control equipment. Profits from the sale were used to buy the Ortho lawn-and-garden business from Chevron Chemical Co.

 

Monsanto Reinvents Itself in the 1990s

Monsanto expected to see growth in its agricultural, chemical, and biotechnological divisions. In 1993, Monsanto and NTGargiulo joined forces to produce a (GMO) genetically altered tomato. As the decade progressed, biotechnology played an increasingly important role, eventually emerging as the focal point of Monsanto's operations. The foray into biotechnology, begun in the mid-1980s with a $150-million investment in a genetic engineering lab in Chesterfield, Missouri, had been faithfully supported by further investments in the ensuing years. Monsanto's efforts finally yielded tangible success in 1993, when BST was approved for commercial sale after a frustratingly slow FDA approval process. In the coming years, the development of further biotech products moved to the forefront of Monsanto's activities, ushering in a period of profound change. Fittingly, the sweeping, strategic alterations to Monsanto's focus were preceded by a change in leadership, making the last decade of the 20th century one of the most dynamic eras in Monsanto's history.

Toward the end of 1994, Mahoney announced his retirement, effective the following year in March 1995. As part of the same announcement, Mahoney revealed that Robert B. Shapiro, Monsanto's president and chief operating officer, would be elected by Monsanto's board of directors as his successor. Shapiro, who had joined Searle in 1979 before being named executive vice-president of Monsanto in 1990, did not waver from exerting his influence over the company he now found himself presiding over. At the time of his promotion, Shapiro inherited a company that ranked as the largest domestic ACRYLIC manufacturer in the world, generating $3 billion of its $7.9 billion in total revenues from chemical-related sales. This dominant side of Monsanto's business, representing the foundation upon which it had been built, was eliminated under Shapiro's stewardship, replaced by a resolute commitment to biotech.

Between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, Monsanto had spent approximately $1 billion on developing its biotech business. Although biotech was regarded as a commercially unproven market by some industry analysts, Shapiro pressed forward with the research and development of biotech products, and by the beginning of 1996 he was ready to launch Monsanto's first biotech product line. Monsanto began marketing herbicide-tolerant GMO soybeans, genetically engineered to resist Monsanto's PATENTED Roundup herbicide, and insect-resistant GMO BT cotton, beginning with 2,000,000 acres of both crops. By the fall of 1996, there were early indications that the first harvests of genetically engineered crops were performing better than expected (yet WORSE results than traditional and organic crops). News of the encouraging results prompted Shapiro to make a startling announcement in October 1996, when he revealed that Monsanto was considering divesting its chemical business as part of a major reorganization into a life-sciences company.

By the end of 1996, when Shapiro announced he would spin-off the chemical operations as a separate company, Monsanto faced a future without its core business, a $3 billion contributor to Monsanto's annual revenue volume. Without the chemical operations, Monsanto would be reduced to an approximately $5-billion company deriving half its sales from agricultural products and the rest from pharmaceuticals and food ingredients, but Shapiro did not intend to leave it as such. He foresaw an aggressive push into biotech products, a move that industry pundits generally perceived as astute. "It would be a gamble if they didn't do it," commented one analyst in reference to the proposed divestiture. "Monsanto is trying to transform itself into a high-growth agricultural and life sciences company. Low-growth cyclical chemical operations do not fit that bill." Spurring Shapiro toward this sweeping reinvention of Monsanto were enticing forecasts for the market growth of plant biotech products. A $450 million business in 1995, the market for plant biotech products was expected to reach $2 billion by 2000 and $6 billion by 2005. Shapiro wanted to dominate this fast-growing market as it matured by shaping Monsanto into what he described as the main provider of "Agricultural Biotechnology".

As preparations were underway for the spin-off of Monsanto's chemical operations into a new, publicly owned company named Solutia Inc., Shapiro was busy filling the void created by the departure of Monsanto's core business. A flurry of acquisitions completed between 1995-1997 greatly increased Monsanto's presence in life sciences, quickly compensating for the revenue lost from the spin-off of Solutia. Among the largest acquisitions were Calgene, Inc., a leader in plant biotech, which was acquired in a two-part transaction in 1995 and 1997, and a 40% interest in Dekalb Genetics Corp., the second-largest seed-corn company in the United States. In 1998, Monsanto acquired the rest of DeKalb, paying $2.3 billion for the Illinois-based company.

By the end of the 1990s, Monsanto bore only partial resemblance to the Monsanto company that entered the decade. The acquisition campaign that added dozens of biotechnology companies to its portfolio had created a new, dominant force in the promising life sciences field, placing Monsanto in a position to reap massive rewards in the years ahead. For example, a rootworm-resistant strain under development had the potential to save $1 billion worth of damages to corn crops per year. Monsanto's pharmaceutical business also faced a promising future, highlighted by the introduction of a new arthritis medication named Celebrex in 1999. During its first year, Celebrex registered a record number of prescriptions. As Monsanto entered the 21st century, however, there were two uncertainties that loomed as potentially serious obstacles blocking its future success. The acquisition campaign of the mid- and late-1990s had greatly increased Monsanto's debt, forcing Monsanto to desperately search for cash. Secondly, there was growing opposition to genetically altered crops at the decade's conclusion, prompting the United Kingdom to ban the yields from GMO crops for a year. A great part of Monsanto's future success depended on the resolution of these two issues.

 

Monsanto's Financial History & Corporate Instability

Monsanto had a difficult time during 2002. Its share price had been steadily falling and, in spite of an upturn in sales in the fourth quarter, total sales for 2002 were only $4,673m, compared to $5,462m for 2001. The primary causes, according to the company, were lower volumes of RoundUp sales in the U.S. due to drought, lower prices for RoundUp due to it going off-patent and facing increased competition from competitors, and lower sales of RoundUp and seeds in Latin America.

Events in Argentina also affected the company in other ways: Monsanto's Argentine unit lost $154 million in the 2002 fiscal year, due to the collapse of the Argentine economy and a deepening recession which forced the government to default on most of its public debt, and devalue the peso in January 2002. The government also converted what was a dollar economy into a peso economy and, as a result, Monsanto received devalued pesos for products it had sold in dollars, slashing its sales income.

In December 2002, CEO Hendrik Verfaillie resigned after he and the board agreed that his performance had been disappointing and the company had faced extensive criticism for failing to deal more honestly and effectively with its difficulties. 'This is a company that has been optimistic on the borderline of lying,' said Sergey Vasnetsov, senior analyst with Lehman Brothers in New York. 'Monsanto has been feeding us these fantasies for two years, and when we saw they weren't real,' its stock price fell.

In 2009, Monsanto profited about $2 billion. After much controversy... in 2010, Monsanto profits dove 50% to about $1 billion. GMO crops are massively failing, some even seedless at harvest time. Subsidized crops are LOSING MONEY annually. The USDA is calling it a "yield-drag" but we all know the GMOs do NOT outperform organic crops... unless you're an accountant for Monsanto.

No matter what weaknesses Monsanto has, it is worth bearing in mind the following: Global sales of Roundup herbicide exceed those of the next 6 leading herbicides combined. Monsanto holds the #1 or #2 position in key corn and soybean markets in North America, Latin America, and Asia. Monsanto also holds a leading position in the European wheat market. Monsanto is the world leader in biotechnology crops. Seeds with Monsanto traits accounted for more than 90% of the acres planted worldwide with herbicide-tolerant or insect-resistant traits in 2001.

 

Timeline of Monsanto's Dark History

1901: Monsanto was founded in St. Louis, Missouri by John Francis Queeny, a 30-year veteran of the pharmaceutical industry. Queeny funded the start-up with capital from Coca-Cola (saccharin). Founder John Francis Queeny named Monsanto Chemical Works after his wife, Olga Mendez Monsanto. Queeny's father in law was Emmanuel Mendes de Monsanto, wealthy financier of a sugar company active in Vieques, Puerto Rico and based in St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies.

1902: Monsanto manufactures its first product, the artificial sweetener Saccharin, which Monsanto sold to the Coca-Cola Company. The U.S. government later files suit over the safety of Saccharin - but loses.

1904: Queeny persuaded family and friends to invest $15000, Monsanto has strong ties to The Walt Disney Company, it having financial backing from the Order's Bank of America founded in Jesuit-ruled San Francisco by Italian-American Roman-Catholic Knight of Malta Amadeo Giannini.

1905: Monsanto company was also producing caffeine and vanillin and was beginning to turn a profit.

1906: The government's monopoly on meat regulation began, when in response to public panic resulting from the publication of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Teddy Roosevelt signed legislation mandating federal meat inspections. Today, Salatin claims that agricultural regulation favors multinational corporations such as ConAgra and Monsanto because the treasonous science that supports the USDA regulatory framework is paid for by these corporations, which continue to give large grants to leading schools and research facilities.

1908: John Francis Queeny leaves his part-time job as the new branch manager of another drug house the Powers-Weightman-Rosegarten Company to become Monsanto's full-time president.

1912: Agriculture again came to the forefront with the creation of the DeKalb County Farm Bureau, one of the first organizations of its kind. In the 1930s the DeKalb AgResearch Corporation (today MONSANTO) marketed its first hybrid seed corn.

1914–1918: During WWI, cut off from imported European chemicals, Monsanto was forced to manufacture it's own, and it's position as a leading force in the chemical industry was assured. Unable to import foreign supplies from Europe during World War I, Queeny turned to manufacturing his own raw materials. It was then his scientists discovered that the Germans, in anticipation of the war, had ripped out vital pages from their research books which explained various chemical processes.

1915: Business expanded rapidly. Monsanto sales surpass the $1,000,000 mark for the first time.

1917: U.S. government sues Monsanto over the safety of Monsanto's original product, saccharin. Monsanto eventually won, after several years in court.

1917: Monsanto added more and more products: vanillin, caffeine, and drugs used as sedatives and laxatives.

1917: Bayer, The German competition cut prices in an effort to drive Monsanto out of business, but failed. Soon, Monsanto diversified into phenol (a World War I -era antiseptic), and aspirin when Bayer's German patent expired in 1917. Monsanto began making aspirin, and soon became the largest manufacturer world-wide.

1918: With the purchase of an Illinois acid company, Monsanto began to widen the scope of its factory operations.

Mar 15, 1918: More than 500 of the 750 employees of the Monsanto Chemical Works, which has big contracts for the Government, went on strike, forcing the plant to dose down.

Aug 15, 1919: Thereafter much of it was declared surplus, and a contract was entered into with the Monsanto Chemical Co., of St. Louis, Mo., by which contract the Director of Sales authorized the Monsanto Co. to sell for the United States its surplus phenol, estimated at 27521242 pounds, for a market price to be fixed from time to time by the representative of the contracting officer of the United States, but with a minimum price of 9 cents a pound.

1919: Monsanto established its presence in Europe by entering into a partnership with Graesser's Chemical Works at Cefn Mawr near Ruabon, Wales to produce vanillin, salicylic acid, aspirin and later rubber.

1920s: In its third decade, Monsanto expanded into basic industrial chemicals like sulfuric acid and other chemicals.

Jan 5, 1920: The petitioner was authorized to sell two tracts of land in the Common Fields of Cahokia, St. Clair County, containing 2.403 acres and 3.46 acres respectively, to the Monsanto Chemical Works for the sum of $1500.

1920-1921: A postwar depression during the early 1920s affected profits, but by the time John Queeny turned over Monsanto to Edgar in 1928 the financial situation was much brighter.

1926: Environmental policy was generally governed by local governments, Monsanto Chemical Company founded and incorporated the town of Monsanto, later renamed Sauget, Illinois, to provide a more business friendly environment for one of its chemical plants. For years, the Monsanto plant in Sauget was the nation's largest producer of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). And although polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were banned in the 1970s, they remain in the water along Dead Creek in Sauget.

1927: Monsanto had over 2,000 employees, with offices across the country and in England.

1927: Shortly after its initial listing on the New York Stock Exchange, Monsanto moved to acquire 2 chemical companies that specialized in rubber. Other chemicals were added in later years, including detergents.

1928: John Queeny's son Edgar Monsanto Queeny takes over the Monsanto company. Monsanto had gone public, a move that paved the way for future expansion. At this time, Monsanto had 55 shareholders, 1,000 employees, and owned a small company in Britain.

1929: Monsanto acquires Rubber Services Laboratories. Charlie Sommer joined Monsanto, and later became president of Monsanto in 1960.

October 1929: The folks at Monsanto Co. fished through their records, but they couldn't find out why the company's symbol is MTC. Monsanto went public in October 1929, just a few days before the great stock market crash. Some symbols are holdovers from the 19th century, when telegraph operators used single-letter symbols for the most active stocks to conserve wire space, says the New York Stock Exchange. Mergers, acquisitions and failure have caused many single-letter symbols to change

1929: Monsanto began production of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) in the United States. PCBs were considered an industrial wonder chemical - an oil that would not burn, was impervious to degradation and had almost limitless applications. Today PCBs are considered one of the gravest chemical threats on the planet. PCBs, widely used as lubricants, hydraulic fluids, cutting oils, waterproof coatings and liquid sealants, are potent carcinogens and have been implicated in reproductive, developmental and immune system disorders. The world's center of PCB manufacturing was Monsanto's plant on the outskirts of East St. Louis, Illinois, which has the highest rate of fetal death and immature births in the state.

Monsanto produced PCBs for over 50 years and they are now virtually omnipresent in the blood and tissues of humans and wildlife around the globe - from the polar bears at the north pole to the penguins in Antarctica. These days PCBs are banned from production and some experts say there should be no acceptable level of PCBs allowed in the environment. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says, "PCB has been demonstrated to cause cancer, as well as a variety of other adverse health effects on the immune system, reproductive system, nervous system and endocrine system." But the evidence of widespread contamination from PCBs and related chemicals has been accumulating from 1965 onwards and internal company papers show that Monsanto knew about the PCB dangers from early on.

The PCB problem was particularly severe in the town of Anniston in Alabama where discharges from the local Monsanto plant meant residents developed PCB levels hundreds or thousands of times the average. As The Washington Post reported, "for nearly 40 years, while producing the now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents : many emblazoned with warnings such as 'CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy' : show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew."

Ken Cook of the Environmental Working Group says that based on the Monsanto documents made public, Monsanto "knew the truth from the very beginning. They lied about it. They hid the truth from their neighbors." One Monsanto memo explains their justification: "We can't afford to lose one dollar of business." Eventually Monsanto was found guilty of conduct "so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society".

1930s: DeKalb AgResearch Corporation (today MONSANTO) marketed its first **HYBRID** seed corn (maize).

1933: Incorporated as Monsanto Chemical Company

1934: "I recognized my two selves: a crusading idealist and a cold, granitic believer in the law of the jungle" - Edgar Monsanto Queeny, Monsanto chairman, 1943-63, "The Spirit of Enterprise"

1935: Edward O'Neal (who became chairperson in 1964) came to Monsanto with the acquisition of the Swann Corporation. Monsanto goes into the soap and detergents industry, starts producing phosphorus.

1938: Monsanto goes into the plastic business (the year after DuPont helped ban hemp because it was superior to their new NYLON product made from Rockefeller OIL). Monsanto became involved in plastics when it completely took over Fiberloid, one of the oldest nitrocellulose production companies, which had a 50% stake in Shawinigan Resins.

1939: Monsanto purchased Resinox, a subsidiary of Corn Products, and Commercial Solvents, which specialized in phenolic resins. Thus, just before the war, Monsanto's plastics interests included phenol-formaldehyde thermosetting resins, cellulose and vinyl plastics.

1939-1945: Monsanto conducts research on uranium for the Manhattan Project in Dayton, Ohio. Dr. Charles Thomas, who later served as Monsanto's chairman of the board, was present at the first test explosion of the atomic bomb. During World War II, Monsanto played a significant role in the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb. Monsanto operated the Dayton Project, and later Mound Laboratories in Miamisburg, Ohio, for the Manhattan Project, the development of the first nuclear weapons and, after 1947, the Atomic Energy Commission.

1940s: Monsanto had begun focusing on plastics and synthetic fabrics like polystyrene (still widely used in food packaging and other consumer products), which is ranked 5th in the EPA's 1980s listing of chemicals whose production generates the most total hazardous waste. From the 1940s onwards Monsanto was one of the top 10 US chemical companies.

1941: By the time the United States entered World War II, the domestic chemical industry had attained far greater independence from Europe. Monsanto, strengthened by its several acquisitions, was also prepared to produce such strategic materials as phosphates and inorganic chemicals. Most important was Monsanto's acquisition of a research and development laboratory called Thomas and Hochwalt. The well-known Dayton, Ohio, firm strengthened Monsanto at the time and provided the basis for some of its future achievements in chemical technology. One of its most important discoveries was styrene monomer, a key ingredient in synthetic rubber and a crucial product for the armed forces during the war. Edward J. Bock joined Monsanto in 1941 as an engineer - he rose through the ranks to become a member of the board of directors in 1965 and president in 1968.

1943: Massive Texas City plant starts producing synthetic rubber for the Allies in World War II.

1944: Monsanto began manufacturing DDT, along with some 15 other companies. The use of DDT in the U.S. was banned by Congress in 1972.

1945: Following WW2, Monsanto championed the use of chemical pesticides in agriculture, and began manufacturing the herbicide 2,4,5-T, which contains dioxin. Monsanto has been accused of covering up or failing to report dioxin contamination in a wide range of its products.

1949: Monsanto acquired American Viscose from England's Courtauld family.

1950: Monsanto began to produce urethane foam - which was flexible, easy to use, and later became crucial in making automobile interiors.

1953: Toxicity tests on the effects of 2 PCBs showed that more than 50% of the rats subjected to them DIED, and ALL of them showed damage.

1954: Monsanto partnered with German chemical giant Bayer to form Mobay and market polyurethanes in the USA.

1955: Monsanto acquired Lion Oil refinery, increasing its assets by more than 50%. Stockholders during this time numbered 43,000. Monsanto starts producing petroleum-based fertilizer.

1957: Monsanto moved to the suburban community of Creve Coeur, having finally outgrown its headquarters in downtown St. Louis, Missouri.

1957-1967: Monsanto was the creator of several attractions in Disney's Tommorrowland. Often they revolved around the the virtues of chemicals and plastics. Their "House of the Future" was constructed entirely of plastic, but it was NOT biodegradable. "After attracting a total of 20 million visitors from 1957 to 1967, Disney finally tore the house down, but discovered it would not go down without a fight. According to Monsanto Magazine, wrecking balls literally bounced off the glass-fiber, reinforced polyester material. Torches, jackhammers, chain saws and shovels did not work. Finally, choker cables were used to squeeze off parts of the house bit by bit to be trucked away."

1959: Monsanto sets up Monsanto Electronics Co. in Palo Alto, begins producing ultra-pure silicon for the high-tech industry, in an area which would later become a Superfund site.

1960: Edgar Queeny turned over the chair of Monsanto to Charles Thomas, one of the founders of the research and development laboratory so important to Monsanto. Charlie Sommer, who had joined Monsanto in 1929, became president. According to Monsanto historian Dan Forrestal, "Leadership during the 1960s and early 1970s came principally from ... executives whose Monsanto roots ran deep." Under their combined leadership Monsanto saw several important developments, including the establishment of the Agricultural Chemicals division with focus on herbicides, created to consolidate Monsanto's diverse agrichemical product lines.

1961-1971: Agent Orange was a mixture of 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D and had very high concentrations of dioxin. Agent Orange was by far the most widely used of the so-called "Rainbow Herbicides" employed in the Herbicidal Warfare program as a defoliant during the Vietnam War. Monsanto became one of 10-36 producers of Agent Orange for US Military operations in Vietnam. Dow Chemical and Monsanto were the two largest producers of Agent Orange for the U.S. military. The Agent Orange produced by Monsanto had dioxin levels many times higher than that produced by Dow Chemicals, the other major supplier of Agent Orange to Vietnam. This made Monsanto the key defendant in the lawsuit brought by Vietnam War veterans in the United States, who faced an array of debilitating symptoms attributable to Agent Orange exposure. Agent Orange is later linked to various health problems, including cancer. U.S. Vietnam War veterans have suffered from a host of debilitating symptoms attributable to Agent Orange exposure. Agent Orange contaminated more than 3,000,000 civilians and servicemen. According to Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 deaths and disabilities, plus 500,000 children born with birth defects, leading to calls for Monsanto to be prosecuted for war crimes. Internal Monsanto memos show that Monsanto knew of the problems of dioxin contamination of Agent Orange when it sold it to the U.S. government for use in Vietnam. Look at what the "EFFECTS" of agent orange look like... keep in mind it was used to remove leaves from the trees where AMERICAN SOLDIERS were breathing, eating, sleeping.

1962: Public concern over the environment began to escalate. Ralph Nader's activities and Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring had been influential in increasing the U.S. public's awareness of activities within the chemical industry in the 1960s, and Monsanto responded in several ways to the pressure.

1962: Monsanto's European expansion continued, with Brussels becoming the permanent overseas headquarters.

1964: Monsanto changed its name to Monsanto Company in acknowledgment of its diverse product line. The company consisted of 8 divisions, including petroleum, fibers, building materials, and packaging. Edward O'Neal became chairperson (came to Monsanto in 1935: with the acquisition of the Swann Corporation) was the first chair in Monsanto history who had not first held the post of president.

1964: Monsanto introduced "biodegradable" detergents.

1965: While working on an ulcer drug in December, James M. Schlatter, a chemist at G.D. Searle & Company, accidentally discovers aspartame, a substance that is 180x sweeter than sugar yet has no calories.

1965: AstroTurf (fake grass) was co-invented by Donald L. Elbert, James M. Faria, and Robert T. Wright, employees of Monsanto Company. It was patented in 1967 and originally sold under the name "Chemgrass". It was renamed AstroTurf by Monsanto employee John A. Wortmann after its first well-publicized use at the Houston Astrodome stadium in 1966.

1965: The evidence of widespread contamination from PCBs and related chemicals has been accumulating and internal Monsanto papers show that Monsanto knew about the PCB dangers from early on.

1967: Monsanto entered into a joint venture with IG Farben = the German chemical firm that was the financial core of the Hitler regime, and was the main supplier of Zyklon-B gas to the German government during the extermination phase of the Holocaust; IG Farben was not dissolved until 2003.

1967: Searle began the safety tests on aspartame that were necessary for applying for FDA approval of food additives. Dr. Harold Waisman, a biochemist at the University of Wisconsin, conducts aspartame safety tests on infant monkeys on behalf of the Searle Company. Of the 7 monkeys that were being fed aspartame mixed with milk, 1 monkey DIED and 5 other monkeys had grand mal seizures.

1968: Edgar Queeny dies, leaving no heirs. Edward J. Bock (who had joined Monsanto in 1941 as an engineer) become a member of the board of directors in 1965, and became president of Monsanto in 1968.

1968: With experts at Monsanto in no doubt that Monsanto's PCBs were responsible for contamination, Monsanto set up a committee to assess its options. In a paper distributed to only 12 people but which surfaced at the trial in 2002, Monsanto admitted "that the evidence proving the persistence of these compounds and their universal presence as residues in the environment is beyond question ... the public and legal pressures to eliminate them to prevent global contamination are inevitable". Monsanto papers seen by The Guardian newspaper reveal near panic. "The subject is snowballing. Where do we go from here? The alternatives: go out of business; sell the hell out of them as long as we can and do nothing else; try to stay in business; have alternative products", wrote the recipient of one paper.

1968: Monsanto became the first organization to mass-produce visible LEDs, using gallium arsenide phosphide to produce red LEDs suitable for indicators. Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) ushered in the era of solid-state lights. From 1968 to 1970, sales doubled every few months. Their products (discrete LEDs and seven-segment numeric displays) became the standards of industry. The primary markets then were electronic calculators, digital watches, and digital clocks.

1969: High overhead costs and a sluggish national economy led to a dramatic 29% decrease in earnings.

1969: Monsanto wrote a confidential Pollution Abatement Plan which admitted that "the problem involves the entire United States, Canada and sections of Europe, especially the UK and Sweden".

1969: Monsanto produces Lasso herbicide, better known as Agent Orange, which was used as defoliant by the U.S. Government during the Vietnam War. "[Lasso's] success turns around the struggling Agriculture Division," Monsanto's web page reads.

1970s: Monsanto was a pioneer of optoelectronics in the 1970s. Although Bock had a reputation for being a committed Monsanto executive, several factors contributed to his volatile term as president. Sales were up in 1970, but Bock's implementation of the 1971 reorganization caused a significant amount of friction among members of the board and senior management. In spite of the fact that this move, in which Monsanto separated the management of raw materials from Monsanto's subsidiaries, was widely praised by security analysts, Bock resigned from the presidency in February 1972.

1970: Cyclamate (the reigning low-calorie artificial sweetener) is pulled off the market in November after some scientists associate it with cancer. Questions are also raised about safety of saccharin, the only other artificial sweetener on the market, leaving the field wide open for aspartame.

December 18, 1970: Searle Company executives lay out a "Food and Drug Sweetener Strategy" that they feel will put the FDA into a positive frame of mind about aspartame. An internal policy memo describes psychological tactics Monsanto should use to bring the FDA into a subconscious spirit of participation" with them on aspartame and get FDA regulators into the "habit of saying Yes."

1971: Neuroscientist Dr. John Olney (whose pioneering work with monosodium glutamate MSG was responsible for having it removed from baby foods) informs Searle that his studies show that aspartic acid (one of the ingredients of aspartame) caused holes in the brains of infant mice. One of Searle's own researchers confirmed Dr. Olney's findings in a similar study.

1972: The use of DDT was banned by U.S. Congress, due in large part to efforts by environmentalists, who persisted in the challenge put forth by Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring in 1962, which sought to inform the public of the side effects associated with the insecticide, which had been much-welcomed in the fight against malaria-transmitting mosquitoes.

1973: Monsanto developed and patented the glyphosate molecule in the 1970s. Monsanto began manufacturing the herbicide Roundup, which has been marketed as a "safe", general-purpose herbicide for widespread commercial and consumer use, even though its key ingredient, glyphosate, is a highly toxic poison for animals and humans.

1973: After spending tens of millions of dollars conducting safety tests, the G.D. Searle Company applies for FDA approval and submits over 100 studies they claim support aspartame's safety. One of the first FDA scientists to review the aspartame safety data states that "the information provided (by Searle) is inadequate to permit an evaluation of the potential toxicity of aspartame". She says in her report that in order to be certain that aspartame is safe, further clinical tests are needed.

1974: Attorney Jim Turner (consumer advocate who was instrumental in getting cyclamate taken off the market) meets with Searle representatives in May to discuss Dr. Olney's 1971 study which showed that aspartic acid caused holes in the brains of infant mice.

1974: The FDA grants aspartame its first approval for restricted use in dry foods on July 26.

1974: Jim Turner and Dr. John Olney file the first objections against aspartame's approval in August.

1975: After a 9-month search, John W. Hanley, a former executive with Procter & Gamble, was chosen as president. Hanley also took over as chairperson.

1976: The success of the herbicide Lasso had turned around Monsanto's struggling Agriculture Division, and by the time Agent Orange was banned in the U.S. and Lasso was facing increasing criticism, Monsanto had developed the weedkiller "Roundup" (active ingredient: glyphosate) as a replacement. Launched in 1976, Roundup helped make Monsanto the world's largest producer of herbicides. RoundUp was commercialized, and became the world's top-selling herbicide. Within a few years of its 1976 launch, Roundup was being marketed in 115 countries.

The success of Roundup coincided with the recognition by Monsanto executives that they needed to radically transform a company increasingly under threat. According to a recent paper by Dominic Glover, "Monsanto had acquired a particularly unenviable reputation in this regard, as a major producer of both dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) - both persistent environmental pollutants posing serious risks to the environment and human health. Law suits and environmental clean-up costs began to cut into Monsanto's bottom line, but more seriously there was a real fear that a serious lapse could potentially bankrupt the company." According to Glover, Roundup "Sales grew by 20% in 1981 and as the company increased production it was soon Monsanto's most profitable product (Monsanto 1981, 1983)... It soon became the single most important product of Monsanto's agriculture division, which contributed about 20% of sales and around 45% of operating income to the company's balance sheet each year during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Today, glyphosate remains the world's biggest herbicide by volume of sales."

1976: Monsanto produces Cycle-Safe, the world's first plastic soft-drink bottle. The bottle, suspected of posing a cancer risk, is banned the following year by the Food and Drug Administration.

1976: Turner & Olney's petition on March 24 triggers an FDA investigation of the laboratory practices of aspartame's manufacturer, G.D. Searle. The investigation finds Searle's testing procedures shoddy, full of inaccuracies and "manipulated" test data. The investigators report they "had never seen anything as bad as Searle's testing."

January 10, 1977: The FDA formally requests the U.S. Attorney's office to begin grand jury proceedings to investigate whether indictments should be filed against Searle for knowingly misrepresenting findings and "concealing material facts and making false statements" in aspartame safety tests. This is the first time in the FDA's history that they request a criminal investigation of a manufacturer.

January 26, 1977: While the grand jury probe is underway, Sidley & Austin, the law firm representing Searle, begins job negotiations with the U.S. Attorney in charge of the investigation, Samuel Skinner.

March 8, 1977: G. D. Searle hires prominent Washington insider Donald Rumsfeld as the new CEO to try to turn the beleaguered company around. A former Member of Congress and Secretary of Defense in the Ford Administration, Rumsfeld brings in several of his Washington cronies as top management. Donald Rumsfeld followed Searle as CEO, and then as President of Searle from 1977-1985.

July 1, 1977: Samuel Skinner leaves the U.S. Attorney's office on July 1st and takes a job with Searle's law firm. (see Jan. 26th)

August 1, 1977: The Bressler Report, compiled by FDA investigators and headed by Jerome Bressler, is released. The report finds that 98 of the 196 animals died during one of Searle's studies and weren't autopsied until later dates, in some cases over one year after death. Many other errors and inconsistencies are noted. For example, a rat was reported alive, then dead, then alive, then dead again; a mass, a uterine polyp, and ovarian neoplasms were found in animals but not reported or diagnosed in Searle's reports.

December 8, 1977: U.S. Attorney Skinner's withdrawal and resignation stalls the Searle grand jury investigation for so long that the statue of limitations on the aspartame charges runs out. The grand jury investigation is dropped. (borderline treason)

1979: The FDA established a Public Board of Inquiry (PBOI) in June to rule on safety issues surrounding NutraSweet.

1980: September 30, FDA Board of Inquiry comprised of 3 independent scientists, confirmed that aspartame "might induce brain tumors". The Public Board of Inquiry concludes NutraSweet should not be approved pending further investigations of brain tumors in animals. The board states it "has NOT been presented with proof of reasonable certainty that aspartame is safe for use as a food additive." The FDA had actually banned aspartame based on this finding, only to have Searle Chairman Donald Rumsfeld (Ford's Secretary of Defense 1975-1977, Bush's Secretary of Defense 2001-2006) vow to "call in his markers," to get it approved in 1981.

1980: Monsanto established the Edgar Monsanto Queeny safety award in honor of its former CEO (1928–1960), to encourage accident prevention.

January 1981: Donald Rumsfeld, CEO of Searle, states in a sales meeting that he is going to make a big push to get aspartame approved within the year. Rumsfeld says he will use his political pull in Washington, rather than scientific means, to make sure it gets approved.

May 19, 1981: 3 of 6 in-house FDA scientists who were responsible for reviewing the brain tumor issues, Dr. Robert Condon, Dr. Satya Dubey, and Dr. Douglas Park, advise against approval of NutraSweet, stating on the record that the Searle tests are unreliable and not adequate to determine the safety of aspartame.

1981: Ronald Reagan is sworn in as President of the United States. Reagan's transition team, which includes Donald Rumsfeld, CEO of G. D. Searle, hand picks Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes Jr. to be the new FDA Commissioner. On January 21, the day after Ronald Reagan's inauguration, GD Searle re-applied to the FDA for approval to use aspartame in food sweetener, and Reagan's new FDA commissioner, Arthur Hayes Hull, Jr., appointed a 5-person Scientific Commission to review the board of inquiry's decision. It soon became clear that the panel would uphold the ban by a 3-2 decision, but Hull then installed a 6th member on the commission, and the vote became deadlocked. He then personally broke the tie in aspartame's favor. Hull later left the FDA under allegations of impropriety, served briefly as Provost at New York Medical College, and then took a position with Burston-Marsteller, the chief public relations firm for both Monsanto and GD Searle. Since that time Hull has never spoken publicly about aspartame.

July 15, 1981: In one of his first official acts, Dr. Arthur Hayes Jr., the new FDA commissioner, overrules the Public Board of Inquiry, ignores the recommendations of his own internal FDA team and approves NutraSweet for dry products. Hayes says that aspartame has been shown to be safe for its' proposed uses and says few compounds have withstood such detailed testing and repeated close scrutiny. G.D. Searle gets FDA approval for aspartame (NutraSweet). Monsanto completes its acquisition of Searle in 1985.

1982: Monsanto GMO scientists genetically modify a plant cell for the first time!

1982: Some 2,000 people are relocated from Times Beach, Missouri, which was found to be so thoroughly contaminated with dioxin, a by-product of PCB manufacturing, that the government ordered it evacuated. Dioxins are endocrine and immune system disruptors, cause congenital birth defects, reproductive and developmental problems, and increase the incidence of cancer, heart disease and diabetes in laboratory animals. Critics say a St. Louis-area Monsanto chemical plant was a source but Monsanto denies any connection.

October 15, 1982: The FDA announces that GD Searle has filed a petition that aspartame be approved as a sweetener in carbonated beverages and other liquids.

July 1, 1983: The National Soft Drink Association (NSDA) urges the FDA to delay approval of aspartame for carbonated beverages pending further testing because aspartame is very unstable in liquid form. When liquid aspartame is stored in temperatures above 85°F degrees Fahrenheit, aspartame breaks down into known toxins Diketopiperazines (DKP), methyl (wood) alcohol, and formaldehyde.

July 8, 1983: The National Soft Drink Association drafts an objection to the final ruling which permits the use of aspartame in carbonated beverages and syrup bases and requests a hearing on the objections. The association says that Searle has not provided responsible certainty that aspartame and its' degradation products are safe for use in soft drinks.

August 8, 1983: Consumer Attorney, Jim Turner of the Community Nutrition Institute and Dr. Woodrow Monte, Arizona State University's Director of Food Science and Nutritional Laboratories, file suit with the FDA objecting to aspartame approval based on unresolved safety issues.

September, 1983: FDA Commissioner Hayes resigns under a cloud of controversy about his taking unauthorized rides aboard a General Foods jet. (General foods is a major customer of NutraSweet) Burson-Marsteller, Searle's public relation firm (which also represented several of NutraSweet's major users), immediately hires Hayes as senior scientific consultant.

Fall 1983: The first carbonated beverages containing aspartame are sold for public consumption.

1983: Diet Coke was sweetened with aspartame after the sweetener became available in the United States.

November 1984: Center for Disease Control (CDC) "Evaluation of consumer complaints related to aspartame use." (summary by B. Mullarkey)

1985: Monsanto purchased G.D. Searle, the chemical company that held the patent to aspartame, the active ingredient in NutraSweet. Monsanto was apparently untroubled by aspartame's clouded past, including a 1980 FDA Board of Inquiry, comprised of three independent scientists, which confirmed that it "might induce brain tumors". The aspartame business became a separate Monsanto subsidiary, the NutraSweet Company.

1986: Monsanto found guilty of negligently exposing a worker to benzene at its Chocolate Bayou Plant in Texas. It is forced to pay $100 million to the family of Wilbur Jack Skeen, a worker who died of leukemia after repeated exposures.

1986: At a congressional hearing, medical specialists denounce a National Cancer Institute study disputing that formaldehyde causes cancer. Monsanto and DuPont scientists helped with the study, whose author provided results to the Formaldehyde Institute industry representatives nearly six months before releasing the study to the EPA, labor unions, and the public.

1986: Monsanto spends $50,000 against California's anti-toxics initiative, Proposition 65. The initiative prohibits the discharge of chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects into drinking water supplies.

1987: Monsanto conducted the first field tests of genetically engineered (GMO) crops.

1987: Monsanto is one of the companies named in an $180 million settlement for Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange.

1987: Monsanto consolidated its AstroTurf management, marketing, and technical activities in Dalton, Georgia, as AstroTurf Industries, Inc.

November 3, 1987: U.S. hearing, "NutraSweet: Health and Safety Concerns," Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Senator Howard Metzenbaum, chairman.

1988: A federal jury finds Monsanto Co.'s subsidiary, G.D. Searle & Co., negligent in testing and marketing of its Copper 7 intrauterine birth control device (IUD). The verdict followed the unsealing of internal documents regarding safety concerns about the IUD, which was used by nearly 10 million women between 1974 and 1986.

1990: EPA chemists allege fraud in Monsanto's 1979 dioxin study, which found exposure to the chemical doesn't increase cancer risks.

1990: Monsanto spends more than $405,000 to defeat California's pesticide regulation Proposition 128, known as the "Big Green" initiative. The initiative is aimed at phasing out the use of pesticides, including Monsanto's product alachlor, linked to cancer and global warming.

1990: With the help of Roundup, the agriculture division of Monsanto was significantly outperforming Monsanto's chemicals division in terms of operating income, and the gap was increasing. But as Glover notes, while "such a blockbuster product uncorks a fountain of revenue", it "also creates an uncomfortable dependency on the commercial fortunes of a single brand. Monsanto's management knew that the last of the patents protecting Roundup in the United States, its biggest market, would expire in the year 2000, opening the field to potential competitors. The company urgently needed a strategy to negotiate this hurdle and prolong the useful life of its 'cash cow'."

1991: Monsanto is fined $1.2 million for trying to conceal discharge of contaminated waste water into the Mystic River in Connecticut.

1993: By April, the Department of Veterans Affairs had only compensated 486 victims, although it had received disability **CLAIMS** from 39,419 veteran soldiers who had been exposed to monsanto's Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam. No compensation has been paid to Vietnamese civilians and though some compensation was paid to U.S. veterans, according to William Sanjour, who led the Toxic Waste Division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), "thousands of veterans were disallowed benefits" because "Monsanto studies showed that dioxin [as found in Agent Orange] was not a human carcinogen." An EPA colleague discovered that Monsanto had apparently falsified the data in their studies. Sanjour says, "If [the studies] were done correctly, they would have reached just the opposite result."

1994: the first of Monsanto's biotech products to make it to market was not a GMO crop but Monsanto's controversial GMO cattle drug, bovine growth hormone - called rBGH or rBST, Monsanto granted regulatory approval for its first biotech product, a dairy cow hormone. Monsanto developed a recombinant version of BST, brand-named Posilac bovine somatropin (rBST/rBGH), which is produced through a genetically engineered GMO E. coli bacteria. Synthetic Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), approved by the FDA for commercial sale in 1994, despite strong concerns about its safety. Since then, Monsanto has sued small dairy companies that advertised their products as free of the artificial hormone, including Ben & Jerry's ice cream and most recently bringing a lawsuit against Oakhurst Dairy in Maine.

1995: Genetically engineered canola (rapeseed) which is tolerant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide was first introduced to Canada. Today 80% of the acres sown are genetically modified canola.

1995: Monsanto is sued after allegedly supplying radioactive material for a controversial study which involved feeding radioactive iron to 829 pregnant women.

1995: Monsanto ranked 5th among U.S. corporations in EPA's Toxic Release Inventory, having discharged 37 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, land, water and underground. Monsanto was ordered to pay $41.1 million to a waste management company in Texas due to concerns over hazardous waste dumping.

1995: The Safe Shoppers Bible says that Monsanto's Ortho Weed-B-Gon Lawn Weed Killer contains a known carcinogen, 2,4 D. Monsanto officials argue that 'numerous studies have found no link to cancer'.

1996: Monsanto introduces its first biotech crop, Roundup Ready soybeans, which tolerate spraying of Roundup herbicide, and biotech BT cotton engineered to resist insect damage.

As Monsanto had moved into biotechnology, its executives had the opportunity to create a new narrative for Monsanto. They begun to portray genetic engineering as a ground-breaking technology that could contribute to feeding a hungry world. Monsanto executive Robb Fraley, who was head of the plant molecular biology research team, is also said to have hyped the potential of GMO crops within the company, as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Monsanto to dominate a whole new industry, invoking the monopoly success of Microsoft as a powerful analogy. But, according to Glover, the more down-to-earth pitch to fellow executives was that "genetic engineering offered the best prospect of preserving the commercial life of Monsanto's most important product, Roundup in the face of the challenges Monsanto would face once the patent expired."

Monsanto eventually achieved this by introducing into crop plants genes that give resistance to glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup). This meant farmers could spray Roundup onto their fields as a weedkiller even during the growing season without harming the crop. This allowed Monsanto to "significantly expand the market for Roundup and, more importantly, help Monsanto to negotiate the expiry of its glyphosate patents, on which such a large slice of Monsanto's income depended." With glyphosate-tolerant GMO crops, Monsanto was able ìto preserve its dominant share of the glyphosate market through a marketing strategy that would couple proprietary "Roundup Ready" seeds with continued sales of Roundup.

1996-1999: Monsanto sold off its plastics business to Bayer in 1996, and its phenylalanine facilities to Great Lakes Chemical Corporation (GLC) in 1999. Much of the rest of its chemicals division was spun off in late 1997 as Solutia. This helped Monsanto distance itself to some extent not only from direct financial liability for the historical core of its business but also from its controversial production and contamination legacy.

1997: Monsanto introduces new GMO canola (rapeseed), GMO cotton and GMO corn (maize), and buys foundation seed companies.

1997: Monsanto spins off its industrial chemical and fibers business into Solutia Inc. amid complaints and legal claims about pollution from its plants. Solutia was spun off from Monsanto as a way for Monsanto to divest itself of billions of dollars in environmental cleanup costs and other liabilities for its past actions - liabilities that eventually forced Solutia to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy. According to a spokesman for Solutia, "(Monsanto) sort of cherry-picked what they wanted and threw in all kinds of cats and dogs as part of a going-away present," including $1 billion in debt and environmental and litigation costs. Some pre-bankruptcy Solutia equity holders allege Solutia was set up fraudulently as it was always doomed to fail under the financial weight of Monsanto's liabilities.

1997: The New York State Attorney General took Monsanto to court and Monsanto was subsequently forced to stop claiming that Roundup is "biodegradable" and "environmentally friendly".

1997: The Seattle Times reports that Monsanto sold 6,000 tons of contaminated waste to Idaho fertilizer companies, which contained the carcinogenic heavy metal cadmium, believed to cause cancer, kidney disease, neurological dysfunction and birth defects.

1997: Through a process of mergers and spin-offs between 1997 and 2002, Monsanto made a transition from chemical giant to biotech giant. Monsanto's corporate strategy led them for the first time to acquire seed companies. During the 1990s Monsanto spent $10 billion globally buying up seed companies - a push that continues to this day. It has purchased, for example, Holden's Foundations Seeds, Seminis - the largest seed company not producing corn or soybeans in the world, the Dutch seed company De Ruiter Seeds, and the big cotton seed firm Delta & Pine. As a result, Monsanto is now the world's largest seed company, accounting for almost a quarter of the global proprietary seed market.

1998: Monsanto introduces Roundup Ready corn (maize).

1998: In the UK, Monsanto purchased the seed company Plant Breeding International (PBI) Cambridge, a major UK based cereals and potato breeder, which Monsanto then merged with its existing UK agri-chemicals and GMO research businesses to form Monsanto UK Ltd. Monsanto UK has carried out field trials of glyphosate-tolerant sugar / fodder beet, glyphosate-tolerant oilseed rape, and glyphosate-tolerant and male sterility / fertility restorer oilseed rape.

1998: "Survey of aspartame studies: correlation of outcome and funding sources," unpublished: Ralph G. Walton found 166 separate published studies in the peer reviewed medical literature, which had relevance for questions of human safety. The 74 studies funded by industry all (100%) attested to aspartame's safety, whereas of the 92 non-industry funded studies, 84 (91%) identified a problem. 6 of the 7 non-industry funded studies that were favorable to aspartame safety were from the FDA, which has a public record that shows a strong pro-industry bias.

1999: After international criticism, Monsanto agrees not to [PUBLICLY] commercialize "Terminator" seeds.

1999: Monsanto opens its Beautiful Sciences exhibit at Disneyland.

1999: Monsanto sells their phenylalanine facilities to Great Lakes Chemical Corporation (GLC) for $125 million. In 2000, GLC sued Monsanto because of a $71 million dollar shortfall in expected sales.

2000: 5 pesticide companies, including Monsanto, controlled over 70% of all patents on agricultural biotechnology. Monsanto had the largest share of the global GMO crops market.

2000: Since the inception of Plan Colombia, the US has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in funding aerial sprayings of Monsanto's Roundup herbicides in Colombia. The Roundup is often applied in concentrations 26x higher than what is recommended for agricultural use. Additionally, it contains at least one surfactant, Cosmo-Flux 411f, whose ingredients are a trade secret, has never been approved for use in the US, and which quadruples the biological action of the herbicide. Not surprisingly, numerous human health impacts have been recorded in the areas affected by the sprayings, including respiratory, gastrointestinal and skin problems, and even death, especially in children. Additionally, fish and animals will show up dead in the hours and days subsequent to the herbicide sprayings.

2000-2002: Monsanto merges with Pharmacia & Upjohn, and changes its name to Pharmacia Corporation. Monsanto Company restructures in deal with Pharmacia & Upjohn Inc; separates agricultural and chemicals businesses and becomes stand-alone agricultural company. By 2000 the current Monsanto had emerged from various transactions, including a merger for a time with Pharmacia, as a legally different corporation from the Monsanto that had existed from 1901-2000. This was despite the fact that both Monsantos shared not just the same name, but the same corporate headquarters near St. Louis, Missouri, and many of the same executives and other employees, not to mention much of the responsibility for liabilities arising out of its former activities.

2001: Retired Monsanto chemist William S. Knowles was named a co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on catalytic asymmetric hydrogenation, which was carried out at Monsanto beginning in the 1960s until his 1986 retirement.

2001: Monsanto GMO crops accounted for 91% of the total area of GMO crops planted worldwide.

2002: Monsanto entered into an important agreement with DuPont. As a result of this "agreement" both companies agreed to drop a raft of outstanding patent lawsuits against one another and to share their patented GMO crops technologies. Some commentators see this ‘agreement' as constituting a pseudo-merger by stealth of the two companies' GMO crops monopolies which are too large to be permitted to merge.

August 13, 2002: Monsanto had sales of $4,673,000,000. Based on 2001 figures Monsanto was the second biggest seed company in the world, and the third biggest agrochemical company. The infamous agrochemical and biotechnology division, still known as Monsanto, was spun off as a nominally separate company with Pharmacia originally retaining an 85% share. Monsanto Company became completely separate and independent from Pharmacia on August 13, 2002, when Pharmacia distributed its remaining Monsanto shares to Pharmacia's stockholders.

2002: Events in Argentina also affected the company in other ways: Monsanto's Argentine unit lost $154 million in the 2002 fiscal year, due to the collapse of the Argentine economy and a deepening recession which forced the government to default on most of its public debt, and devalue the peso in January 2002. The government also converted what was a dollar economy into a peso economy and, as a result, Monsanto received devalued pesos for products it had sold in dollars, slashing its sales income.

2002: The Washington Post ran an article entitled, "Monsanto Hid Decades Of Pollution, PCBs Drenched Alabama Town, But No One Was Ever Told" about PCBs. Monsanto share price plummeted in the second half of 2002 following its sell off by former parent company Pharmacia and this was compounded by the departure of Monsanto's CEO at the end of 2002.

December 2002: CEO Hendrik Verfaillie resigned after he and the board agreed that his performance had been disappointing and the company had faced extensive criticism for failing to deal more honestly and effectively with its difficulties. "This is a company that has been optimistic on the borderline of LYING," said Sergey Vasnetsov, senior analyst with Lehman Brothers in New York. "Monsanto has been feeding us these FANTASIES for two years, and when we saw they weren't real, its stock price fell."

2003: Jury fines Monsanto and its former chemical subsidiary, Solutia, Inc. (now owned by Pharmacia Corp.), agreed to pay $600 million in August to settle claims brought by more than 20,000+ residents of Anniston, Alabama - over the severe contamination of ground and water by tons of PCBs dumped in the area from the 1930s until the 1970s. Court documents revealed that Monsanto was aware of the contamination decades earlier.

2003: Solutia, Inc. (now owned by Pharmacia Corp.) files Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

2004: Monsanto forms American Seeds Inc holding company for corn and soybean seed deals and begins brand acquisitions.

2004-2005: Monsanto filed lawsuits against many farmers in Canada and the U.S. on the grounds of patent infringement, specifically the farmers' sale of seed containing Monsanto's patented genes. In some cases, farmers claimed the seed was unknowingly sown by wind carrying the seeds from neighboring crops, a claim rejected in Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser. These instances began in the mid to late 1990s, with one of the most significant cases being decided in Monsanto's favor by the Canadian Supreme Court. By a 5-4 vote in late May 2004, that court ruled that "by cultivating a plant containing the patented gene and composed of the patented cells without license, the appellants (canola farmer Percy Schmeiser) deprived the respondents of the full enjoyment of the patent." With this ruling, the Canadian courts followed the U.S. Supreme Court in its decision on patent issues involving plants and genes.

2005: Monsanto has patent claims on breeding techniques for pigs which would grant them ownership of any pigs born of such techniques and their related herds. Greenpeace claims Monsanto is trying to claim ownership on ordinary breeding techniques. Monsanto claims that the patent is a defensive measure to track animals from its system. They furthermore claim their patented method uses a specialized insemination device that requires less sperm than is typically needed.

2005: Environmental, consumer groups question safety of Roundup Ready crops, say they create "super weeds," among other problems.

2006: In January, the South Korean Appeals Court ordered Dow Chemical and Monsanto to pay $62 million in compensation to about 6,800 people.

2006: Organic farmers, concerned about the impact of GMO alfalfa on their crops, sued Monsanto (Monsanto Company vs. Geertson Seed Farms). In response, in May 2007, the California Northern District Court issued an injunction order prohibiting farmers from planting Roundup Ready alfalfa until the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) completed a study on the genetically engineered crop's likely environmental impact. As a result, the USDA put a hold on any further planting of Roundup Ready alfalfa.

2006: the Public Patent Foundation filed requests with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to revoke 4 patents that Monsanto has used in patent lawsuits against farmers. In the first round of reexamination, claims in all 4 patents were rejected by the Patent Office in 4 separate rulings dating from February through July 2007. Monsanto has since filed responses in the reexaminations.

2006-2007: Monsanto buys several regional seed companies and cotton seed leader Delta and Pine Land Co. - Competitors allege Monsanto gaining seed industry monopoly.

2007: Monsanto's biotech seeds and traits (including those licensed to other companies) accounted for almost 90% of the total world area devoted toGMOseeds.

2007: California Northern District Court issued an injunction order prohibiting farmers from planting Roundup Ready alfalfa until the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) completed a study on the genetically engineered crop's likely environmental impact. As a result, the USDA put a hold on any further planting of Roundup Ready alfalfa.

2007: USDA Dairy Survey estimated rBGH use at 15.2% of operations and 17.2% of cows.

2008: Monsanto sells Posilac business to Eli Lilly (polio vaccine manufacturer) amid consumer and food industry concerns about the dairy cow hormone supplement.

2008: Acquires sugarcane breeding companies, and a Dutch hybrid seed company.

2008-2009: U.S. Department of Justice says it is looking into monopolistic power in the U.S. seed industry.

2009: Monsanto posts record net sales of $11.7 billion and net income of $2.1 billion for fiscal 2009.

2009: Monsanto announces a project to improve the living conditions of 10,000 small cotton and corn farmers in 1,100 villages in India (keep in mind that 100,000 small cotton farmers in India commit suicide by drinking Roundup AFTER massive GMO crop failures bankrupted their families); donates cotton technology to academic researchers.

2010: Monsanto introduces their new brand Genuity

2010: Farmers in South Africa report 80% of the GMO corn was SEEDLESS at harvest time!

2010: Monsanto was named company of the year by Forbes magazine in January.

2010: Demand for milk without using synthetic hormones has increased 500% in the US since Monsanto introduced their rBST product. Monsanto has responded to this trend by lobbying state governments to ban the practice of distinguishing between milk from farms pledged not to use rBST and those that do.

2011: Monsanto posts net income of $1 billion for fiscal 2010. OUCH! a 50% loss from 2009.

Today, over 80% of the worldwide area devoted to GMO crops carries at least one genetic trait for (Monsanto's Roundup) herbicide tolerance. Herbicides account for about one-third of the global pesticide market. Monsanto's glyphosate-resistant (Roundup Ready) seeds have reigned supreme on the biotech scene for over a decade - creating a near-monopoly for Monsanto's Roundup herbicide - which is now off patent. Roundup is the world's biggest selling pesticide and it has helped make Monsanto the world's 5th largest agrochemical company.

 

The Future of GMO Crops: Wheat for Humans

Monsanto's strategy is based around genetically modifying SUBSIDIZED commodity crops, and refining technologies which it already has commercialized. Monsanto is continuing to develop genetically modified traits that can be stacked in a single seed product, along with Roundup Ready tolerance to provide continuing sales for the herbicide.

The most important new product Monsanto is trying to introduce is RoundUp Ready wheat. This has caused an unexpected level of debate in the USA, generally because it is the first major GMO crop which would be used predominantly for products to be consumed by humans rather than as animal feed. Wheat is also a vital export crop for the USA, which currently holds 26-28% of the world market share. The EU was the fourth largest importer of U.S. wheat overall in 2001, and although this position may diminish due to new EU rules on imports, it would nevertheless be extremely serious for the USA to virtually lose the EU market for its wheat, which is a real possibility if GMO wheat is commercialized.

As well as wheat, Monsanto is mainly concentrating on different traits in crops which it has already worked with. The majority of its field trials in the USA during the last two years have involved corn, altered to exhibit various traits.

Monsanto is also involved in a joint venture with Cargill Renessen, which is currently developing the following GMO crops: Improved-oil soybeans for feed, Three kinds of improved-energy corn (maize) for feed Healthier oil for food uses, Improved-protein soybeans for feed, High-starch/ethanol corn (maize), Processor Preferred soybeans.

Herbicide-tolerant (RoundUp Ready) varieties continue to play a large part in Monsanto's plans, showing that although these are extremely easy to reject due to their obvious benefits to corporations and lack of benefits to humans, Monsanto believes that there is still a large potential for their GMOs.

http://bestmeal.info/monsanto/company-history.shtml#timeline

SiNeh~

 

His family’s company lost an estimated $150,000 worth of bees in the recent die-off. “Not only is it a monetary loss here, but we work really hard on these bees to keep them in good health.” The Florida die-off coincides with a recent county-wide mosquito eradication effort, during which helicopters flew over various parts of the county and sprayed airborne pesticides. Officials, of course, deny that this taxpayer-funded spraying initiative had anything to do with the bee genocide, though. “The fact that it was so widespread and so rapid, I think you can pretty much rule out disease,” said Bill Kern, an entomologist from the University of Florida (UF) to Florida Today. “It happened essentially almost in one day. Usually diseases affect adults or the brood, you don’t have something that kills them both.” Many of the beekeepers who lost their hives in the mass killing raised their bees to sell to American farmers, who then used them to pollinate food crops. Because of their massive losses, many of these beekeepers could end up losing their entire beekeeping businesses.

Does this mean all the rights "taken" from us will return? Do we really need external authorities anymore?

 

Posted by Stephen Cook on May 21, 2013

Stephen:  Eh?  Whose running this world? Several multinational companies are seriously lobbying the British PM David Cameron to stop his campaigning for stricter rules on global companies dodging tax. One of those CEOs is smiling away, at left. The whole issues of global tax avoidance is, I feel, about to become even more-wide-ranging. Meanwhile tax offices everywhere continue to pursue us little folk!

Multinational CEOs tell David Cameron to Rein in Tax Avoidance Rhetoric

Burberry, Tesco, Vodafone and BAE Systems join CBI chief (at left) in lobbying PM to stop moralising on tax ahead of G8 talks

By Simon Bowers, Lawrie Holmes and Rajeev Syal,  The Guardian, Monday 20 May 2013 21.02 BST

The bosses of some of Britain’s largest multinational corporations have urged David Cameron to stop moralising and rein in his rhetoric on tax avoidance ahead of a G8 summit next month. Chief executives of companies such as Burberry, Tesco, Vodafone, BAE Systems, Prudential and GSK were keen to take a final opportunity to lobby the prime minister in advance of the meeting of political leaders in Northern Ireland.

Cameron has pledged to use Britain’s G8 presidency to tackle aggressive tax avoidance by multinationals, but is also keen to heed the counsel of his business advisory group, which he met with on Monday.

Also present was Google’s chairman, Eric Schmidt, despite the internet search firm coming under fierce attack from MPs last week because of its tax arrangements.

The president of the Confederation of British Industry, Sir Roger Carr, who was at the meeting, was among those who have taken issue with Cameron’s attacks on the ethics of big business tax engineering.

During a speech earlier in the day at a London event organised by Oxford University’s Said business school, Carr said: “It is only in recent times that tax has become an issue on the public agenda – Starbucks, Google, Amazon – businesses that the general public know and believe they understand; businesses with a brand that become a perfect political football, the facts difficult to digest; public passions easy to inflame.”

In what appeared to be pointed criticism of increasingly firm rhetoric from Cameron on multinational tax engineering, Carr insisted tax avoidance “cannot be about morality – there are no absolutes”.

In January the prime minister used a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to put a marker down on questions of tax structuring by big business. “Some forms of avoidance have become so aggressive that I think it is right to say these are ethical issues,” he said, urging multinationals to “wake up and smell the coffee”.

Carr said: “Tax payments are not, and should not be … a payment viewed as a down payment on social acceptability, or a contribution made by choice in order to defuse public anger or political attack.”

The CBI boss, who is being talked of as a successor to Dick Olver as chairman of BAE Systems, invited the G8 to consider three points in relation to tax reform:

• Avoiding the moral debate – “it’s all about the rules”.

• Fixing the rules on an international stage, not unilaterally.

• Consulting on proposed changes with business.

A Downing Street spokesman said the specific controversy generated by Google’s tax affairs was not raised during the meeting with business leaders, though discussions did focus on “explaining the tax and tax transparency part of the G8 agenda”.

Also speaking at the Said business school event was Margaret Hodge MP, chair of the public accounts committee and one of parliament’s most outspoken critics of tax avoidance. With Starbucks and the big four accountancy firms in attendance, she said: “Your time has now come on accountability. You are now being asked to answer certain questions and it’s important that we all engage.

“One could argue that the way some companies organise their affairs is anti-competitive to many British companies. Especially if you look at the way Amazon arranges its affairs.”

On Revenue & Customs’ appearance before her committee last week, she added: “Their approach, when they came to parliament last week was complacent and patronising, an attitude that actually didn’t help take the committee forward. I don’t think it helped members work closely together across my committee.

“In my opinion they are not aggressive enough. These are issues of how you judge individual companies, but at the moment I’m not clear how HMRC makes its judgments. So toughen up, HMRC.”

Other attendees at the event were representatives of retailer Marks & Spencer, which was accused of running its online business in a similar structure to Amazon’s, and pharmacy group Alliance Boots, which recently relocated its headquarters to Switzerland.

(NaturalNews) A mile-wide tornado with 200mph winds tore through the suburbs of Oklahoma yesterday, killing 51 people and broadcasting a rude reminder of the fragility of human life and human civilization. Here at Natural News, our hearts go out to the family members of those killed in the storm, and we hope some lessons can be learned from this that will save other lives in the future.

But wait a second, you can't stop a tornado, right?

Of course you cant. But you can prepare for a tornado, and here's where we get into a discussion that the mainstream media won't dare touch because it's not "politically correct" to have an intelligent discussion about any of this.

But here's the question we need to ask if we're going to save lives: How many of those who were killed in the tornado knew there was a tornado warning in place but did nothing to move to a safe shelter? Obviously this question doesn't apply to all the children who were killed, as they are not responsible for their own actions. (Their parents are.) But how many adults actually took the tornado warnings seriously and sought adequate shelter?

Because here's the simple, raw, undeniable truth of the matter: People who seek shelter vastly reduce their chances of becoming fatalities during any disaster. Tornados and hurricanes, in particular, come with advance warnings. They aren't like earthquakes that suddenly appear without any warning at all. Tornados usually give you minutes or even hours of advance notice. Hurricanes give you days of advance notice.

And yet, even when huge hurricanes are approaching their target, many people deny the danger and take no precautions at all!
 

Survivability vs. tornadoes is 80% preparedness and 20% luck

To be clear what I'm saying here, you can never control 100% of your risk or outcomes in a natural disaster, but through smart preparedness strategies, you can very often control 80% or more.

Taking tornados as an example, there is a reason why Oklahomans have, for generations, built "storm shelters" where they could retreat to survive an approaching storm. The photo on the right, for example, shows a low-tech, high-survivability storm shelter that can easily be installed in almost any yard.

Storm shelters offer almost 100% survivability against tornados. Tornados cannot penetrate underground, after all. If YOU are underground, even in a small, cramped storm shelter that's just two meters wide and two meters tall, you have an almost 100% chance of emerging from the storm completely unhurt.

Most fatalities in tornados happen because people are killed from flying debris. You might even call it "wind shrapnel." Take a bunch of lumber, aluminum siding, bricks and roof trusses and accelerate them to 200 mph and you have a deadly weapon that will kill almost anyone it touches. But put your body just three feet underground -- in a tornado shelter -- and all that debris flies right past you, harmlessly above your shelter.
 

America has become a culture of short-term thinkers

Investing in a storm shelter, however, requires forethought. It requires long-term planning, and the culture of America has radically shifted away from long-term planning to short-term thinking. This is evident in our national debt spending, national politics, consumer behavior, education system and everything else.

Housing companies that build homes in Oklahoma, Kansas, Northern Texas and other "tornado alley" zones don't even offer storm shelters. Most home buyers don't want storm shelters because they aren't long-term thinkers. But consider the facts: If you live in Oklahoma, you have to realize the area is going to be struck by devastating tornados sooner or later.

People who buy homes in pine tree forests, similarly, would be insane to believe that forest won't one day burn up all around them. (All forests burn sooner or later.)

People who live in Los Angeles have to be aware they're living in an earthquake zone, and folks who have homes in Florida must certainly realize they are sooner or later going to get hit with category 5 hurricanes.

This isn't rocket science. No one who lives in Kansas, Oklahoma or Texas can claim to have been "caught by surprise" when these repeating natural disasters strike. To live in these areas is to live with the ever-present knowledge that such risks will never go away. My hope is that more and more of these people will take seriously the importance of personal preparedness so that more lives can be saved as these repeating disasters continue to unfold.
 

Americans rarely seek shelter from storms, but they gladly "shelter in place" when government warns them about terrorists

If you really want to get Americans to take cover and seek shelter, tell them there's an armed teenager running loose in their city, tossing pressure cookers everywhere. The people will immediately and obediently follow orders and seek cover in their homes.

But tell them there's a category 5 hurricane about to strike their city, and they'll ignore the warnings while calling a bunch of friends over for a "hurricane party."

Making matters worse, local governments rarely invest in the construction of buildings that can serve as effective shelters against oncoming storms. Many of the children killed in Oklahoma yesterday, for example, were killed by collapsing roofs of schools.

Read this description from Fox News:

Television footage on Monday afternoon showed homes and buildings that had been reduced to rubble in Moore, which is south of Oklahoma City. Footage also showed vehicles littering roadways south and southwest of Oklahoma City. At the Plaza Towers Elementary School, students were hugging and clinging to the walls of the school as the tornado passed over, KFOR reports. An Associated Press photographer saw several children being pulled out of what was left of the school. The school's roof appeared mangled and the walls had fallen in or had collapsed.

Dare I ask the question: Why didn't that school have a basement for sheltering the children?

The answer is devastatingly simple: Because even local governments in Oklahoma -- where tornados are a predictable repeating threat -- often don't think long-term enough to invest in basement shelters for their own children. If they had, those children could have simply been led into the basement and they would all still be alive today. (Tornados don't rip apart properly-constructed basement shelters.)
 

Sometimes more people die than should have

My message in all this? In every natural disaster, more people die than should have died. I'm not blaming everyone who died for their own death, because there's always that 20% "luck" factor when it comes to storm and disasters. Sometimes people are literally killed due to no fault of their own. Sometimes people who prepare still get caught by unexpected random events. But across the board, at least 80% of your "risk" in a natural disaster is under your own control.

Is the TV news warning about an approaching tornado? Seek out an underground shelter and stay there until the storm passes.

Is the National Weather Service warning about an approaching hurricane? Evacuate early and get out of the way of the storm.

Worried about earthquakes? Carry emergency supplies in your car, in your basement and even simple items on your person (like a flashlight and seatbelt cutter).

No matter what risks you face in your particular geographic area, there are smart, effective ways to drastically reduce your risk of being victimized by disasters.

Nearly all "natural" disasters are repeating, predictable events that occur over and over again in the same geographic areas. People who build homes in flood plains should never be surprised when their homes flood. People who build homes in forests should never be surprised when those forests burn. People who live in Oklahoma should always be prepared for tornados.

Did you know that the simple act of crawling into a roadway culvert can save your life from a tornado? Even lying in a ditch is often a far better strategy than hiding inside a building that can't handle the wind loads. There are many, many ways to protect yourself and your family members from tornados, hurricanes and other natural disasters. But you've got to take the idea of preparedness seriously...

... and most people simply won't do that. It takes too much effort to plan ahead.

http://rt.com/news/gagging-uk-police-payout-470/

Mere months after it emerged some 14.7 million pounds (US$22.4 million) was spent on gagging UK Health Service employees, a report has exposed 13 police forces across the country signed over 300 compromise agreements [1] with staff, spending millions.

The gagging clauses are being widely used across UK police forces, leading to concerns they are being used to ensure the silence of police employees. This would prevent them from speaking out over issues of public interest, according to a Freedom of Information survey, reported in the Telegraph.

Stephen Barclay, a Conservative member of the Public Accounts Committee, told the paper that the practice was “very concerning,” going on to state that “these agreements have a clear effect beyond those who sign them because other officers with ambition will see what has happened to those who have concerns and decide to stay silent.”

The 13 forces which responded to the requests for information were only the ones which agreed to provide details, meaning the actual number enforcing the confidentiality agreements is likely to be significantly higher.

The Freedom of Information requests showed that some 200 officials and civil servants put their name to compromise agreements over the course of two years, costing some 14 million pounds. Additionally, 4,500 local authority workers entered similar arrangements.

Compromise agreements are a legally-binding deal, usually surrounding the termination of employment, during which soon-to-be former employees are provided with a hefty sum, providing they do not pursue any claims against their employer, thereby preventing possible complaints.

Such compromise agreements frequently involve ‘confidentiality clauses’, meaning the terms of the agreement cannot be revealed, and sometimes, alongside some or all aspects of the employment.

Signatories have in the past been specifically instructed not to air any previously-aired concerns with the press.

Lancashire Constabulary had the highest incidence, reporting 34 signings. Surrey Police’s 28 agreements over the course of three years have cost the taxpayer some 614,000 pounds.

Greater Manchester Police confirmed to the paper that 14 agreements had been signed in the past three years, with a further 17 being signed by Nothumbria Police.

London’s Metropolitan Police is also implicated, having gagged 230 of its police officers over a seven year period, with its former head of human resources, Martin Tiplady, being handed 259,462 pounds after he put his name to one of the agreements. The former commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson received 176,838 pounds in a single payment: more than 1.8 times his annual salary.

James Patrick, a constable in the Metropolitan Police, was investigated for gross misconduct and told not to use Twitter or his blog last December, after he expressed concerns over the impact of the cuts on the force.

“This is someone who has tried to raise his concerns through the legitimate channels, but was not able to do so,” his lawyer Karen Todner told the Guardian at the point of investigation.

“They are gagged in the NHS, arrested in our police forces and blacklisted in many industries,” Cathy James, chief executive of the charity Public Concern at Work told the Guardian earlier this week, prompting calls for a review of legislation.

In the case of the NHS, potential whistleblowers have been gagged, threatened and stopped from raising concerns pertaining to patient safety.

Barclay told the Daily Mail earlier this year that NHS gagging clauses were having “having a chilling effect on whistleblowers,” saying that “hundreds of potential whistleblowers may have been prevented from speaking out for fear of legal action.”

The former chief of United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust, Gary Walker, revealed in February that he received a 500,000-pound ‘super gag’ in 2010. The money was offered in exchange for keeping silent regarding his belief that his hospital was a threat to patient safety.

Footnotes:

[1]  Compromise agreements are a legally-binding deal, usually surrounding the termination of employment, during which soon-to-be former employees are provided with a hefty sum, providing they do not pursue any claims against their employer, thereby preventing possible complaints. Such compromise agreements frequently involve ‘confidentiality clauses’, meaning the terms of the agreement cannot be revealed, and sometimes, alongside some or all aspects of the employment. Signatories have in the past been specifically instructed not to air any previously-aired concerns with the press.

ERIC HOLDER, MICHELLE OBAMA, BILL AYERS' WIFE ALL ALLEGEDLY INVOLVED IN TRAFFICKING CHILD PORN VIA HIS OK CITY BOMBING, COPY/MIRROR IF YOU WISH BEFORE THIS IS DELETED BY FB FEDOPHILES

Rampant Child Porn Rings at Government Agencies
November 23, 2012 | Filed underBreaking News,Corruption | Posted by SUAadmin
http://presidentialfield.com/8-22-2012-marine-links-sidley-austin-s...
Editor’s Note – With Fast and Furious, Benghazi, leaks galore, and all of the ‘green energy’ boondoggles, the Obama administration now has much more to worry about – yes, another monster scandal. Haven’t heard of it? Imagine, massive child porn rings at Defense, at the DOJ, and it seems everywhere, and right into the State governments.

This administration also has a habit of giving whistleblowers a hard time. So what does the President do, he pens a Presidential Memorandum. It must be read – between the lines – ostensibly its to stop leaks, but isn’t a whistleblower a leak? The timing is incredible – again! Here is a screen shot of the White House web site:

To Catch Government Workers With Ties to Child Porn, Call the IRS

by Lori Handrahan, Ph.D. – Forbes

Last week the IRS decided to award Bradley Birkenfeld his $104 million dollar share for helping bust UBS bank. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and his staff were instrumental. Senator Grassley vowed to delay pending Department of Treasury nominations if the IRS Whistleblower Program, he wrote the legislation in 2006, continued to be mismanaged.

This powerful voice from Iowa has been a beacon in the storm during an Obama Administration that has targeted whistleblowers and prevented accountability as never before. The Pentagon is also under Senator Grassley’s fire for failing to examine 1,700 of the 5,200 reports of employees doing child porn. The Pentagon claimed it “wasn’t a priority.” Senator Grassley and his staff have made it one. The closed investigation into wide-spread use of child porn at the Pentagon is now re-opened.

There is a national crisis of federal employees engaged in the child porn industry and a related epidemic at the state level. I’ve documented two states, Vermont and Maine, that appear to be running state protected child trafficking rings with evidence of cops, judges, lawyers, clergy and government employees covering for each other. This kind of racketeering creates powerful, and extremely profitable, pedophile rings.

Money drives the crime. It is estimated that a criminal willing to molest a child in front of a live webcam can earn $1,000 a night. In Kittery Maine, at the “Danish Health Club,” one bust yielded $6.1 million in “door fees” over a five year period with “prostitutes” earning $12 million. Pimps’ earnings were not reported. The “door man” was a retired police officer whose wife worked in back. This bust happened because of one hard-working IRS agent, Rod Giguere.

An estimated $1.4 billion has been collected by the IRS’s Whistleblower program since 2006; $464 million collected in 2010 but only $48 million in 2011. Half of all global child porn is produced in America. Ten new images of children are posted daily. Estimates of the global profits from child porn range from $3-20 billion. Imagine what the IRS Whistleblower program could collect if they focused on child trafficking as Agent Rod Giguere did in Maine.

The Department of Justice (DOJ)’s Child Exploitation and Obscenities unit has been, by many accounts, totally disabled under US Attorney General Eric Holder. Mr. Holder even refused to prosecute his own Assistant United States Attorney caught doing child porn on DOJ computers. The IRS wants 4,000 new agents and a $300 million budget to enforce ObamaCare. Instead, these resources should be allocated, entirely, for an IRS Child Exploitation & Trafficking Unit.

With so many police, judges, clergy, state and federal employees across America involved in the child porn industry Americans should be able to turn to the IRS’s Whistleblower program. Richard Weber, Chief of IRS’s Criminal Division in Washington DC, is one point of contact. Apparently, the IRS cares about trafficked children. That’s good news because America’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, does not.

Child trafficking and porn are the fastest growing crimes in America. With billions being laundered in black money it makes solid economic sense for the IRS to focus on the child porn industry. Eric Holder’s Department of Justice has demonstrated they have no interest in prosecuting pedophiles, not even their own. The IRS should be given substantial resources to compensate for DOJ’s disgraceful failure. American tax-payers, not to mention America’s children, will reap huge rewards.

Perhaps Senator Grassley will raise his powerful voice in support.

_______________

Lori Handrahan, Ph.D., is a professor at American University’s School of International Service researching the national and international security ramifications of America’s child porn industry. She can be reached at handraha@american.edu

Thursday, May 17, 2012
McConnell Links Kristine Marcy to Pride in Missing Children and FBI Murrah Bomb
Presidential Field McConnell has linked his sister Kristine Marcy to a Missing Children racket – allegedly run by a pedophile ring in the DOJ Pride organization – and the Murrah Building Bomb, apparently designed by the recently-arrested former FBI explosives specialist, Donald Sachtleben.

See #1:
Abel Danger Mischief Makers - Mistress of the Revels - 'Man-In-The-Middle' Attacks

Prequel:
McConnell Links Kristine Marcy Nortel JABS To Gore Hammer JonBenet [Wells Fargo]

“FBI Complicit in OKC Bombing Terror Attack: K9 Unit Police Officer Tells All! 1/3”


“FBI Crime Lab Supervisor Dr. Fred Whitehurst & OKC Bombing”


“http://www.complex.com/city-guide/2012/05/fbi-agent-who-investigate... FBI Agent Who Investigated Unabomber Busted For Child Pornography BY JULIAN KIMBLE | MAY 15, 2012 | 12:13 PM | PERMALINK A former FBI explosives specialist who worked on some of the agency's most high-profile cases was arrested for distributing child pornography. 54-year-old Donald Sachtleben faces 20 years for distributing the material over unsecured wireless networks using the screen name “pedodave69.” The Indiana resident worked for the bureau from 1983 to 2008, and was still working as an FBI contractor and a visiting assistant forensic sciences professor at Oklahoma State University . Sachtleben investigated the bombing at the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, the USS Cole bombing in Yemen, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and the 1995 Oklahoma City federal building bombing. Sachtleben even organized the search of the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s Lincoln, Mont., cabin. He penned Kaczynski's arrest affidavit. Sachtleben allegedly used the network of a 73-year-old Illinois man to share 220 child pornography images during one night in September 2010. He was caught because he used the pedodave69@yahoo.com email address from his home, where agents found 30 images on a laptop that he also used for work.”

“[Spoliation inference Kristine Marcy recruited FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen, in 1979, to develop missing children pedophile traps for foreign and domestic government officials and Hanssen recruited Sachtleben to design/spoliate evidence of the Murrah Building bombs] Robert Philip Hanssen (born April 18, 1944) is a former American FBI agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States for 22 years from 1979 to 2001. As of 2012, he is serving a life sentence at the Federal Bureau of Prisons Administrative Maximum facility in Florence, Colorado. ….. In 1994, Hanssen expressed interest in a transfer to the new National Counterintelligence Center, which coordinated counter-intelligence activities. However, when a superior told him that he would have to take a lie detector test to join, Hanssen changed his mind [and Kristine Marcy decided to launch DOJ Pride as cover for the pedophile ring inside the Department of Justice]. Three years later, convicted FBI mole Earl Edwin Pitts told the Bureau that he suspected Hanssen due to the Mislock incident. Pitts was the second FBI agent to mention Hanssen by name as a possible mole, but the FBI simply wrote this off as a reference to the Mislock incident. No action was taken. Hanssen was sent in 1995 to the Office of Foreign Missions at the State Department as the senior FBI liaison, with the task of coordinating travel by foreign diplomats in the United States . On his weekly visits back to FBI headquarters he frequently visited Johnie Sullivan, Chief of the National Security Division's (NSD) Intelligence Information Services (IIS) Unit. Hanssen mostly wanted to chat about his interest in computer security technology and the new Intelink-FBI network that Sullivan's unit was building and installing throughout the Bureau's major field offices.”

McConnell reminds the FBI and the citizens it serves, that his sister was Robert Hanssen’s handler during the period when Hanssen was apparently working with Donald Sachtleben on phony continuity of government protocols used during the bombing attacks of 9/11.


Home / News / 8-22-2012 Marine Links Sidley Austin Snuff-Film Escrow to British Bankers Pig Farm RICO
8-22-2012 Marine Links Sidley Austin Snuff-Film Escrow to British Bankers Pig Farm RICO

Plum City – (AbelDanger.net) – August 22, 2012. United States Marine Field McConnell, has linked a Sidley Austin snuff-film escrow service, allegedly launched by Bernadine Dohrn while she mentored Michelle Obama in the 1980s, to a British Bankers' Association RICO enterprise with a Libor-rated mortgage on the Pickton pig farm in British Columbia.
Linda Louise Wright Pickton Clan & The Guild Socialist Ensemble Recorded Live

Freedom of Information Act in the UK filed by a doctor there has revealed 30 years of secret official documents showing that government experts have

1. Known the vaccines don’t work
2. Known they cause the diseases they are supposed to prevent
3. Known they are a hazard to children
4. Colluded to lie to the public
5. Worked to prevent safety studies

Link http://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/government-expert...

Those are the same vaccines that are mandated to children in the US.

Educated parents can either get their children out of harm’s way or continue living inside one of the largest most evil lies in history, that vaccines – full of heavy metals, viral diseases, mycoplasma, fecal material, DNA fragments from other species, formaldehyde, polysorbate 80 (a sterilizing agent) – are a miracle of modern medicine.

Freedom of Information Act filed in the US with the CDC by a doctor with an autistic son, seeking information on what the CDC knows about the dangers of vaccines, had by law to be responded to in 20 days. Nearly 7 years later, the doctor went to court and the CDC argued it does not have to turn over documents. A judge ordered the CDC to turn over the documents on September 30th, 2011.

On October 26, 2011, a Denver Post editorial expressed shock that the Obama administration, after promising to be especially transparent, was proposing changes to the Freedom of Information Act that would allow it to go beyond declaring some documents secret and to actually allow government agencies (such as the CDC) to declare some document “non-existent.”

Simultaneous to this on-going massive CDC cover up involving its primary “health” not recommendation but MANDATE for American children, the CDC is in deep trouble over its decades of covering up the damaging effects of fluoride and affecting the lives of all Americans, especially children and the immune compromised. Lawsuits are being prepared. Children are ingesting 3-4 times more fluoride by body weight as adults and “[t]he sheer number of potentially harmed citizens — persons with dental fluorosis, kidney patients tipped into needing dialysis, diabetics, thyroid patients, etc — numbers in the millions.”

The CDC is obviously acting against the health of the American people. But the threat to the lives of the American people posed by the CDC’s behavior does not stop there. It participated in designed pandemic laws that are on the books in every state in the US, which arrange for the government to use military to force unknown, untested vaccines, drugs, chemicals, and “medical” treatments on the entire country if it declares a pandemic emergency.

The CDC’s credibility in declaring such a pandemic emergency is non-existent, again based on Freedom of Information Act. For in 2009, after the CDC had declared the H1N1 “pandemic,” the CDC refused to respond to Freedom of Information Act filed by CBS News and the CDC also attempted to block their investigation. What the CDC was hiding was its part in one of the largest medical scandals in history, putting out wildly exaggerated data on what it claimed were H1N1 cases, and by doing so, created the false impression of a “pandemic” in the US.

The CDC was also covering up e financial scandal to rival the bailout since the vaccines for the false pandemic cost the US billions. And worse, the CDC put pregnant women first in line for an untested vaccine with a sterilizing agent, polysorbate 80, in it. Thanks to the CDC, “the number of vaccine-related “fetal demise” reports increased by 2,440 percent in 2009 compared to previous years, which is even more shocking than the miscarriage statistic [700% increase].

The exposure of the vaccine hoax is running neck and neck with the much older hoax of a deadly 1918-19 flu. It was aspirin that killed people in 1918-19, not a pandemic flu. It was the greatest industrial catastrophe in human history with 20-50 million people dying but it was blamed on a flu. The beginning of the drug industry began with that success (and Monsanto was part of it). The flu myth was used by George Bush to threaten the world with “another pandemic flu that could kill millions” – a terror tactic to get pandemic laws on the books in every state and worldwide. Then the CDC used hoax of the pandemic hoax to create terror over H1N1 and to push deadly vaccines on the public, killing thousands of unborn children and others. (CDC will not release the data and continues to push the same vaccine.)

The hoax of the vaccine schedule is over, exposed by FOIAs in the UK.

The hoax of the CDC’s interest in children’s lives has been exposed by its refusal to respond to a doctor’s FOIAs around its knowledge of vaccine dangers.

The 1918-19 pandemic hoax has been exposed by Dr. Karen Starko’s work on aspirin’s role in killing people.

And despite refusing to respond to FOIAS, the CDC’s scandalous hoax of a 2009 flu pandemic and its part in creating it, was exposed by CBS NEWS.

And the Obama administration, in attempting to salvage the last vestige of secrecy around what is really happening with vaccines, by declaring agency documents non-existent, has made its claim of transparency, non-existent.

But pandemic laws arranging for unknown vaccines to be forced on the entire country are still in place with HHS creating a vaccine mixture that should never be used on anyone and all liability for vaccines having been removed. Meanwhile, a Canadian study has just proven that the flu vaccine containing the H1N1 vaccine which kills babies in utero, actually increases the risk of serious pandemic flu.

Americans who have been duped into submitting their children to the CDC’s deadly vaccines, have a means to respond now. People from every walk of life and every organization, must

1. take the information from the UK FOIAs exposing 30 years of vaccine lies, the refusal of the CDC to provide any information on what it knows about those lies, and the Obama Administration’s efforts to hide the CDC’s awareness of those lies, and go to their state legislatures, demand the immediate nullification of the CDC vaccine schedule and the pandemic laws.

2. inform every vet. active duty military person, law enforcement people, DHS agents and medical personnel they know, of the vaccine hoax, for their families are deeply threatened, too, but they may not be aware of it or that they have been folded into agency structures by the pharmaceutical industry (indistinguishable from the bankers and oil companies) that would make them agents of death for their country with the declaration of a “pandemic” emergency or “bio-terrorist” attack. It is completely clear now that the terrorism/bioterrorism structures are scams so that any actions taken to “protect” this country using those laws would in fact be what threatens the existence of Americans.

It was aspirin that killed millions in 1918-19. Now it is mandated and unknown, untested vaccines with banned adjuvants in them that threaten the country with millions of deaths. At the same time, the CDC is holding 500,000 mega-coffins, built to be incinerated, on its property outside Atlanta. Not to put to fine a point on this, but it’s clear now that the CDC should not be involved in any way with public health.

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), we know that vaccines are not a miracle of modern medicine. Any medical or government authority which insists vaccines prevent diseases is either ignorant of government documents (and endless studies) revealing the exact opposite or of the CDC’s attempts to hide the truth about vaccines from the public, or means harm to the public.

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), we know the vaccine schedule is a hoax.

The health danger to American children and adults are vaccines.

Read the paper here for the full evidence to back up these conclusions in its 45 pages. An excellent piece of investigative research:

The vaccination policy and the Code of Practice of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI): are they at odds?
http://www.ecomed.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/3-tomljenovic.pdf

And don’t forget to read more from the proceedings of The 2011 BSEM Scientific Conference now published online here:

The Health Hazards of Disease Prevention – BSEM Scientific Conference, March 2011.
http://www.ecomed.org.uk/publications/the-health-hazards-of-disease...