from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:

The big story this week is of the eminent Chinese scientist allegedly behind the contamination of China's rice crop with an illegal GM strain, which he developed and from which he stands to gain. (CHINESE GM RICE CONTAMINATION)

His cavalier attitude seems to be mirrored in the majority of British life scientists, who, according to a new study, dismiss the potential threats posed by their research, saying even if their work is used for terrorism that is "not their problem". (THE OTHER TERRORISTS).

Claire [email protected]
www.gmwatch.org / www.lobbywatch.org

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CONTENTS
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CHINESE GM RICE CONTAMINATION
THE OTHER TERRORISTS
AFRICA
EUROPE
ASIA
MIDDLE EAST
AUSTRALASIA
CHURCHES
CORPORATE TAKEOVER OF SCIENCE
ORGANICS

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CHINESE GM RICE CONTAMINATION
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+ EMINENT SCIENTIST BEHIND ILLEGAL GM RICE?
According to an article in the South China Morning Post, "Mainland farmers are continuing to grow GM rice against both Chinese law and the advice of concerned critics, due in part to the efforts of an eminent scientist."

The article indicates clear collusion between GM scientists and a commercial company to sell farmers GM seeds without informing them either that the seeds were genetically engineered or that it was illegal to plant them. This apparently started some five years ago and the man at the centre of the scandal is Zhang Qifa, who is described as "China's leading biotechnology scientist". According to the article, "Most investigations identified Professor Zhang - who works at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Huazhong (Central China) Agricultural University - as the source of the illegal grain."

Testing has shown that the GM traits in the illegally grown rice are identical to those researched by Professor Zhang. And Zhang cannot claim to have been unaware of what was going on - the investigations and testing only started after he himself referred in Newsweek to how GM rice was being grown commercially in China. He told the magazine, "A local company got some of the GM rice seed and began selling it to local farmers". Zhang has used this cultivation and consumption of the GM rice as the basis of a claim for its safety!

If Zhang has been behind this illegal proliferation of GM rice over the last five years, what could be his motivation?

According to the article, Professor Zhang's national plant gene centre has received major funding from the Ministry of Science and Technology. This scale of investment, according to James Keeley, a British researcher studying China's biotechnology policy, "puts pressure on scientists" to make sure their products are used - otherwise, spending on biotech research could dry up.

Scientists quoted in the article also suggest that what is occuring is part of a wider international strategy in which GM scientists have been implicit. As one scientist puts it, "In some countries, popularisation happened before there were standardised regulations."

What this means is that scientists are deliberately colluding in the illegal proliferation of unapproved GM seeds in order to force governments to approve them. This strategy has proven effective as a means of forcing GM legalisation in a series of countries, including most noticeably India and Brazil.

The example of India is quoted in the article. "Indian authorities had long refused to commercialise anti-pest GM cotton, but scientists deliberately gave the cotton seeds to farmers and it was soon widely grown across one province." From there the seeds "quickly spread out of control". For the government, as one expert puts it, "it looks embarrassing, given that you can't enforce regulations, or you're persuaded that since farmers want it, you should just let them have it."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5499

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THE OTHER TERRORISTS
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+ SCIENTISTS BLASE ON TERROR
Scientists in the UK are failing to consider potential terror threats resulting from their work and dismissing warnings about bio-weapons, new research reveals. Group interviews with more than 600 life scientists from 26 universities, presented at a closed meeting of international chemical weapons experts at Oxford University, indicated that the majority of academics believe that terrorism is not their problem and research should not be restricted because of potential misuse.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5499

+ VENTER BLASE ON TERROR
Craig Venter, leader of the Human Genome Project, says he is well on the way to creating an artificial single cell organism. It seems he is not bothered by the fact that, as he himself once pointed out, "We don't know sh*t about biology."

He dismisses fears that if one can create artificial life, then this will open a Pandora's Box for those who want to play God or take us to an era of bioterror.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5503

+ FORMER FRENCH PRESIDENT ORDERED BOMBING OF RAINBOW WARRIOR
Francois Mitterand ordered the sinking of the Greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior, despite the late President's denials at the time. Exactly 20 years after the bomb attack on the ship in Auckland harbour, a report by Admiral Pierre Lacoste, who at the time was head of the DGSE, the French foreign intelligence service, was published by Le Monde.

In Operation Satanic, as the DGSE called the plan, three teams of secret agents used explosives to sink the vessel as it was preparing to sail to observe French nuclear testing at Mururoa atoll in the Pacific. Fernando Pereira, a Portuguese photographer, died in the 1985 attack. A French inquiry held the same year found no involvement by DGSE chiefs or Government and Pereira's widow has never received so much as an apology, let alone any form of compensation, for his murder.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5509

+ "WISE-USE" IN THE WHITE HOUSE
Veterans of once-discredited militant anti-environmental "wise-use" groups are now setting natural-resource policy for the Bush administration. Among prominent appointees in the administration with wise-use backgrounds is I