Taking Another Look at World Terrorism

We heard the sad news yesterday (July 7, 2005) of the terrorist bombings of the London subways and bus.  A series of blasts killed at least 50 innocent people and wounded another 700.  Our hearts go out to the people of London, to those who were impacted by this awful event and to those whose souls are gripped with fear.  We wish for them both comfort and justice; and long for a time when such terrorism might be all but forgotten.

But, despite the tragic events in London today, and the on-going trauma in Iraq, there is another threat, of world-wide scope, that threatens to do more harm than all of the terrorist acts known until today.  It doesn't present instant devastation like a bomb blast; but for those who understand it, the fear cuts very deep and grips the heart.

A global threat of unimaginable proportions

On July 4, 2005, the Codex Alimentarius Commission adopted the vitamin and mineral guidelines recommended to it by its Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU).  While the language of these guidelines might seem innocuous enough, and adherence to Codex itself is said to be voluntary, the truth is much more ominous for anyone who relies on nutritional supplements in a therapeutic range for their health and well-being.  It should also be a grave concern for anyone interested in liberty.

These Codex guidelines present a clear and present danger — on a global scale — for two basic reasons:

• The guidelines themselves, although adopted — and therefore binding — don't have any of the "values" — the upper limits of what will be allowable in any dietary supplement — in place.  Those are to be filled in later.  All indications are that those "values" will be extremely limited.

What is more, the kinds of supplements allowed under Codex will not include any natural supplements; they will all be synthetic, pharmaceutically produced.  Since these don't have the same beneficial effects in the body — and are, in fact, generally toxic at any useful dosage — and will most likely require a prescription to get, this poses a significant risk to those who require effective supplementation.

• Because membership in the World Trade Organization and other trade agreements (such as NAFTA, and the soon-to-be-ratified CAFTA; and down the road, FTAA ) make the Codex guidelines mandatory.

The result of this is that access to nutritional supplements in amounts that have any therapeutic value may well be banned.  The Alliance for Natural Health filed suit in the EU courts to overturn the Directives that would have removed about 7,500 safe and useful supplements from the market in England.  If the ANH fails to get this Directive overturned, it could well become the world standard.

Making matters worse, as Codex progresses, we could well see the global banning of organic foods, the unlabeled introduction of genetically modified foods into the market, the requirement of greater use of herbicides and pesticides (beyond what is allowed in the United States at present) and the required irradiation of foods.

For anyone concerned about a natural approach to health and healthcare, this amounts to a terroristic threat on a global scale.

Who are the terrorists who pose the greatest threat to you?

In no way would I wish to minimize the evil of those who plant bombs that kill innocent men, women and children.  These people are despicable beyond words.  (I'm quite sure we'll see none of them in Paradise.)  Nor would I ever wish to deflect attention away from those who have suffered so much at the hands of these terrorists.  But still, however evil and/or misguided (to be overly gracious, perhaps) they may be, what they do, they do from a motive greater than themselves.  And their actions, while devastating, are still on a relatively limited scale.

The terrorists that cause me the greatest alarm are the giant pharmaceutical, chemical and petrochemical and agribusiness corporations.

Why?

Because:

• They are answerable only to their own greed, and
• They have the power and influence that hundreds of billions of dollars of disposable income can buy, and don't seem concerned in the least about personal freedoms or the devastating consequences of their agenda.

The pharmaceutical giants spend around $40 billion a year just in lobbying Congress.  Beyond that, they do PR campaigns on TV (to let us know what great guys they all are), sponsor most of the network news, effectively nudging how stories are covered, and contribute billions more to the major political parties (all of them; there is no way that this can be called free speech) and campaigns of individual candidates, effectively buying Congress and the White House.

These are the guys who own the FDA and have lied to us about the dangers of the drugs they manufacture.  These are the guys who influence the FDA to keep drugs on the market when it's known that they pose a serious threat to us.  And these are the guys who are trying to get Vitamin C restricted because it can "pose a threat to the public well-being".

These are the guys who foul our environment, poison our land, food, air and water, and get protection from the government for the harm they do.  These are the guys who produce toxic, cancer-inducing junk foods, yet can make health claims about them because they contain something that some research, somewhere — within very different parameters — suggests might have some health benefit or other, while convincing the FDA to ban health claims on organic foods or herbs that have thousands of years of traditional use to back their claims.

And these are the guys driving Codex; these are the guys behind the WTO and NAFTA, CAFTA and FTAA.  And while a bomb may kill 50 and injure 700, the policies these people are forcing upon us will likely kill millions, and injure countless others who are dependent upon nutritional supplements for their life and well-being.

And these are the guys who tell us that Codex is voluntary, and will not affect the rights we gained under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), and that CAFTA never mentions Codex.

Listen to me: A terrorist never tells you that he's planting a bomb.  He relies on you not knowing until the bomb goes off.

That's what big pharma, big chem and big agri are counting on.

What's at stake for big business

If big business is able to dictate Codex standards (as seems apparent) and buy continued support for the World Trade Organization and NAFTA, and press through the passage of CAFTA and FTAA, it will reap untold billions of dollars in additional profits — and the power and influence they can buy.  They will have won on two important fronts:

1. They will have reduced their cost of doing business by a huge margin, and
2. They will have eliminated the threat of competition.

That is just too big of a brass ring to latch onto to allow concerns about national sovereignty, personal freedom or the health and welfare of the world to influence.

Let's face it: Paying American workers a decent wage (as well as benefits and taxes) eats into the bottom line.  Why bear that expense if they can ship the jobs overseas?  With "free trade" in place, it's much cheaper to import their products from the developing world than to produce them here.

Agribusiness faces its own set of problems.  They've developed these amazing genetically modified seeds with two killer characteristics:

1. It doesn't work to set aside part of the crops they produce for the next season's planting, because the seed won't germinate, and
2. The original seed won't germinate without the right chemicals being used.

This is a cash cow for these giant companies.  There's only one problem: a growing number of Americans with an interest in organic, sustainable agriculture and food products, and the aversion of much of the American public to genetically modified foods and irradiation.  Codex, in conjunction with NAFTA and CAFTA, would eliminate that problem.  Codex has language prohibiting the use of any other kind of seed, and NAFTA/CAFTA would make Codex standards the law.  The windfall of all of this is just too big to worry about things like personal freedom or health concerns.

Pharmaceutical companies have their own set of problems.  Let's face it: they've had some set-backs of late.  Vioxx was removed from the market, and the safety of other medications have been called into question.  Fast-tracking FDA approval has helped; but still, big pharma has been "forced" to find alternative uses for their products.  And going to the public with their scare tactics has been helpful, as well.

Still, it's not enough.  There are tens of millions of Americans who have opted for a natural solution to their healthcare needs.  If I recall the number, it's something like $80 billion that's not going into their pockets.

But, if big Pharma can eliminate nutritional supplements as a viable alternative to their poisons, or restrict access to supplements to only the synthetic, pharmaceutical variety that they can make for pennies and sell for hundreds of dollars, that adds hundreds of billions of dollars to their bottom line.

That is the situation from the side of these terrorists.  They are counting on you not seeing their agenda until it's too late.  But once the trap is sprung, you will be impacted as much as any of those London commuters who were caught unaware.

The cost to you of this terrorist plot

Whatever the perceived gains to big business in the Codex/CAFTA deal, the cost to you is even bigger.  While it might be nice for you to buy that shirt or pair of shoes for a few dollars less, there are very real costs that are very hard to adequately calculate:

• Hundreds of thousands of jobs have already been shipped overseas.  Things will only get worse under CAFTA.  The devastation this has already wrought in the lives of so many will not get better, and the economic burden will only grow, due to lost tax revenues and the increased burden to public programs that help these idled workers.
• Because good manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas, most new jobs created are in low-paying service industries or in healthcare.  For most workers, this is a net loss.
• Between the years 1993 and 2000 (since NAFTA), what was once a $16.6 billion net export deficit with Mexico and Canada increased by 378 percent to $62.8 billion.  World-wide, our trade deficit hit $61 billion just for the month of February (2005) , with America's current debt to foreign countries now over $3 trillion.  It will only get worse with CAFTA.  This has huge implications for national security.

But more troubling to me will be our loss of freedom.  If CAFTA is adopted and the Codex standards are as restrictive as seems probable, Congress will be forced to repeal the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, and our right to choose a more natural life-style and an alternative to the toxic pharmaceutical model of healthcare will be lost.  For many who have been through the nightmare of conventional medicine and seen its inadequacies first hand, the loss of access to effective nutritional supplementation is frightening indeed.  It's not only a threat to a way of life, it's a threat to life itself.

What makes the Codex/CAFTA issue so critical?

What many people don't understand is that Section 6 of CAFTA would require America to form a Sanitary Phytosanitary Measures Committee to insure that we harmonize our laws with the SPS Agreement in the World Trade Organization.

Article 3 of the WTO's SPS Agreement requires America to harmonize its food safety laws (read that: DSHEA) to Codex standards: "To harmonize sanitary and phytosanitary measures on as wide a basis as possible, Members shall base their food safety measures on international standards, guidelines or recommendations" (emphasis added, not the significance).  Codex sets the standards for food safety, including vitamins and minerals; and those standards are not based on sound science, nor are our health concerns in view.

You see, Americans have a very different outlook on nutritional supplements than the rest of the world.  We place great value on them as something that benefits our general health and longevity.  Millions of Americans emphatically believe that the supplements they take improve their health and the quality of their lives.  And they back this up with their wallets, spending billions of dollars a year on them.  However, to most of the world, they are of no real value.

• In 1994, vitamin consumers generated the largest volume of mail to Congress on any issue in the history of Congress in order to pass the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA).  One of the primary principles of DSHEA was that supplements are to be regarded as food, not drugs.  That left them free from being overly-regulated.
• In other countries, supplements are viewed as drugs.  That is the standard that Codex would impose world-wide.

Given the rabid bias of the FDA against nutritional supplements and the campaign it waged against natural healthcare in the early 1990s, this access to supplements was a hard-won freedom; but with Codex and CAFTA, that freedom would be lost.

Congress would have no choice but to repeal DSHEA or face billions of dollars in penalties imposed by a foreign court.  It has already happened to the steel industry here.  It has already happened in California with a carcinogenic gas additive that had worked its way into the ground water.  It has already happened in Utah, where their ban on on-line gambling was ruled illegal under NAFTA.

This is a loss of national sovereignty to a foreign, non-elected bureaucracy.  And it is the loss of our right to life and well-being.

Another thing to consider: In addition to the many multi-million dollar companies that produce our supplements that would be forced out of business by the inter-relationship of Codex and CAFTA, hundreds of thousands of home businesses in the network marketing industry would also be lost.  The economic impact of this would be enormous, and the personal devastation it would wreak would be impossible to calculate.

The fear factor

While terrorism relies on hiddenness to accomplish its goals, once the bomb goes off and those goals become apparent, it seeks to strip away our freedom and disrupt our lives through fear.  After all, terrorism isn't terrorism unless it produces a reasonable sense of fear; and its goal is to force an alteration of life as we have known it.  I believe big pharma, big chem and big agri are accomplishing that, making them, in my opinion, the worst terrorists on the planet.

Personally, I think having a definable country is a good thing.  I'm not a nationalist or especially patriotic, but I love my country.  I love what it has stood for over the years (at least in ideal terms).  I love what it has done in the defense of oppressed peoples.

I also believe that maintaining our sovereignty is a good thing.  Our leaders (at least in theory) are answerable to voters.  That gives us a degree of leverage — something that would be lost under CAFTA.

But these have been sold to big business.  National interests have been subverted for business interests.

But that's not what scares me.

What fills me with a sense of dread is that, to improve the bottom line of big business, my access to dietary supplements of any therapeutic value will be denied.  It was these supplements that enabled me to climb out of over 30 years of severe disability after the medical establishment had written me off.  Through these supplements, I was enabled to overcome Fibromyalgia and, for the first time in my life, do something productive.

To lose access to these supplements means that I'd be returned to a miserable kind of existence, without hope for anything better.  My life, as I have come to know it, would be over; and my best hope would be an early death (which, in all likelihood, I'd see).

Another man I know went through a nightmare of mental illness caused by a genetic need for certain supplements.  Standard therapy was horrific and could not offer any significant help.  The only thing that gave him his life back was access to nutritional supplements at therapeutic levels.  To have access to these cut off is, for him, truly terrifying.

And, there are thousands of similar stories to be told.