In San Antonio, Texas, and across the country, people will be walking for a global foundation.
Partnership Walk 2012
How Far Will You Walk
to end global poverty?
October 6th, 2012 (Saturday)
Hemisfair Park, San Antonio
Live entertainment, exhibits food and fun for the whole family
Partnership walk is an initiative of Aga Khan
Foundation U.S.A and its volunteers in communities across America. AKF
USA uses innovative solutions to empower communities to overcome
poverty, hunger, illiteracy and illness in Asia and Africa. 100% of your
tax-deductible contribution goes directly to projects supported by AKF
USA.
The invitation doesn’t mention Monsanto but on the Aga Khan Foundation USA’s web page on
Rural Development in India,
buried among much that “sounds” positive, is mention of “new inputs or
technologies that improve agricultural productivity.” Those are code
words for pesticides and genetic engineering. Further down in the same
paragragh, the Aga Khan Foundation says that it has set up village
organizations that by pass local traders to provide “seeds and other
inputs.” It sounds as though the Foundation is cutting off local
farmers from small local suppliers to arrange a single outside source of
“seeds and other inputs.” What kind of seeds and what kind of inputs
is this global foundation leaving small farmers in India with?
Aga Khan USA says they are setting up “collective agri-input supply
and marketing to ensure that poor farmers are not exploited by local
traders,” but this only sounds good if one is not aware of what happened
to farmers in India when Monsanto came in with their “seeds and
inputs.”
But a little investigation shows the extreme exploitation that has occurred which did not come from the local traders.
Monsanto’s GMO Seeds Contributing to Farmer Suicides Every 30
“Monsanto’s cost-inflated and ineffective seeds have been driving
farmers to suicide, and is considered to be one of the largest — if not
the largest — cause of the
quarter of a million farmer suicides over the past 16 years. ….
“According to the most
recent figures (provided by the New York University School of Law), 17,638 Indian farmers committed suicide in 2009 — about
one death every 30 minutes. In 2008, the
Daily Mail labeled the continual and disturbing suicide spree as ‘The GM (
genetically modified)
Genocide’. Due to failing harvests and inflated prices that bankrupt
the poor farmers, struggling Indian farmers began to kill themselves.
Oftentimes, they would commit the act by drinking the very same
insecticide that Monsanto supplied them with — a gruesome testament to
the extent in which Monsanto has wrecked the lives of independent and
traditional farmers.
“To further add backing to the tragedy, the rate of Indian farmer suicides
massively increased
since the introduction of Monsanto’s Bt cotton in 2002. It is no wonder
that a large percentage of farmers who take their own lives are cotton
farmers, the demographic that is thought to be among the most impacted.”
In San Antonio, the Indian community is invited to participate and
enjoy “Live entertainment, exhibits food and fun for the whole family”
as they donate to a Foundation that appears to be fund raising for
Monsanto, which has been responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths
of poor Indian farmers. The Foundation says it is helping small
farmers but small farmers were not killing themselves en masse before
Monsanto and other outsiders introduced what they claimed were “new
inputs or technologies that improve agricultural productivity.”
“In India, around 60 percent of the population (currently standing
at 1.1 billion) are directly or indirectly reliant on agriculture.
Monsanto’s intrusion into India’s traditional and sustainable farming
community is not only concerning for health and wellness reasons, but it
is now clear that the issue is much more serious.”
Monsanto’s GMO Seeds Contributing to Farmer Suicides Every 30
On top of the outrageousness of asking Indians to donate to Monsanto
(or other biotech companies doing the same thing) after how many Indians
have died because of them, there is a special irony in this “Walk to
end Global Poverty” occurring this weekend. The Walk is being held
right before early voting begins in California with an initiative on the
ballot to get GMOs labeled for the first time in the US (Prop 37). As
Monsanto and the biotech industry and giant US food and agricultural
interests are pouring in billions to keep people from knowing what is in
their food, and grass roots groups are struggling to come up with
enough funds to counter the media lies, a fund raiser is occurring to
support Monsanto – a multi-billion dollar corporation, playing on the
sympathies of those who care about the poor. For Monsanto, the presence
of its GMOs, whether in food or in NGO activities occurring in Asia and
Africa, must be hidden.
Ordinary people are doing all they can to get the truth out.
Passing Prop 37 will allow people to know what is in the food, and the
need to do so is now urgent. Results are continuing to come in on how
deadly GMOs are. Monsanto’s corn’s impact on test animals is horrifying.
But now scientists are warning about
GM-wheat as well.
“Expert scientists warn that genetically modified wheat may cause
Glycogen Storage Disease IV, resulting in an enlarged liver, cirrhosis
of the liver, and failure to thrive. Children born with this disease
usually die at about the age of 5. …. Professor Heinemann’s expert
opinion outlining how CSIRO’s GM wheat silencing technology could
transfer to humans is believed to be a world-first, and has been
reviewed by scientists in Australia, the UK and Austria.”
The Aga Khan Foundation is involved offering “systems to improve …. wheat yields.”
The “Walk to End Global Poverty” appears to be a nationwide fund
raising event – fun for the whole family! – to raise money for Monsanto
and the biotech industry. This are the companies threatening families
with cancers and early deaths.
