At first glance, food, health and politics make strange bed fellows. Until one becomes the tool of the other — used for conquests that were previously unattainable.

In June, 2004, the Agricultural Ministerial Expo took place in Sacramento, California. The U.S. government invited International delegates to meet for the purpose of showing them the benefits of genetically modified food and how they can grow and utilize GM foods in their countries.

The normally quiet city of Sacramento anticipated huge crowds and riots rivaling the Seattle WTO protest in 1999. The police bolstered their numbers and prepared themselves with riot gear, armored vehicles, tanks, Humvees, helicopters, gas launchers, shotguns and combat equipment. Additional modes of travel included bikes, horses, motorcycles and paddywagons.

Throughout the event, police harassment and excessive force prevailed.

From the first day, the Welcome Center for the protestors was under constant surveillance. Legal observers reported that within a span of 30 minutes, 35 police cars passed by, several helicopters flew over, and 3 Humvees and several bicycle cops drove by. The surveillance continued like that all weekend long by police and "Federal Protective Service" vehicles.

Daniel Weintraub, a correspondent for the Sacramento Bee, (who does not support the demonstrator's cause) took his sons to see what the demonstration was about on the second day of the Expo (when things were settling down). Here are his words from the Sunday, June 29, 2003 edition of the Sacramento Bee, "Cops' protest tactics cost lots in dollars and in liberty:"

"By my count, 35 square blocks of the city were cordoned off to traffic during the evening rush hour. I parked as close as I could and we started walking. We soon ran into a phalanx of Highway Patrol officers, then a military assault vehicle with an officer in an armor-protected turret atop it. We saw a black SUV race by with several cops riding on the running boards."

"We saw police on horses wearing plastic face shields (the horses, not the cops). We saw sheriff's deputies in black shorts, white shirts and protective gear, riding mountain bikes. All told, hundreds of law enforcement officers were roaming the streets or standing in formation. A helicopter hovered overhead."

"When we finally approached the gathering, it turned out to be several dozen scraggily attired protestors of all ages, a few chanting slogans on the sidewalk outside the garden. They didn't look at all menacing. Had the police not been there, we wouldn't have felt the least bit threatened."

There were literally more police present at the demonstrations than protestors. At times, twice as many, at other times, some accounts say seven times as many police as demonstrators.

Despite the fact that only a fraction of protestors showed up than anticipated, and despite the fact that they were largely peaceful, the police used their riot gear and combat equipment.

Throughout the event, police would herd people together, order them to disperse, but not allow them to go. When the order to disperse was given, the police would block all the exits. The demonstrators had no where to go, and the police would not move.

Outfitted in protective gear and using sticks, clubs, rubber bullets, and tazers (electric guns), the police made 73 arrests over the course of the Ag Expo. All but 4 were misdemeanors. The felony arrests were made for such reasons as protestors chaining themselves to trees, locking down at the Science building at UCD, and breaking a window. But the misdemeanor protestors could not understand why they were being arrested. To their knowledge, they did nothing to break the law.

They did not know the law had been changed. Seven days before demonstrations began, the city passed an ordinance that stated what behaviors and or materials were not allowed. The ordinance set rules for such things as the maximum measurement of protest signs allowed. It made mineral oil in squeeze bottles unlawful (apparently it can be used to wash off chemical weapons); it made it illegal to wear bandanas on the face or cover the face during the protest (to protect against tear gas) and similar rulings. The ordinance was to be in effect for 30 days and was clearly designed to allow police to make arrests.

The significant thing is that THE CITY DID NOT INFORM THE PROTESTORS ABOUT THE ORDINANCE. Like the secret police of totalitarian dictators, they silently changed the rules to freely make arrests on their terms.

Here are other "highlights" from the three days of the Ag Expo as posted on a support website by demonstrators. Most occurances listed have been confirmed by the legal team, however, some are still being sorted out in court:

• A solid wall of policemen lines the streets.

• Police stop and harass moving groups of more than 7-10 people.

• An officer was seen bludgeoning someone getting a drink of water.

• Police indiscriminately grabbed some people who were just standing around at the capitol and tasered them. They were not protesters.

• Blood on the street from people being beaten.

• A circle of activists sitting down in the street was tasered — they were cut off from the rest of the crowd.

• A woman was beaten by cops in riot gear.

• A 17 year-old woman was handcuffed and detained by plain clothes police officers in an unmarked vehicle for having a flag, which they confiscated.

• Police try to stop media activists from filming their brutal arrests by shining bright lights on their cameras.

• At the end of each day, police in their cars followed participants walking home — shining their headlights at the pedestrians and/or circling them ALL THE WAY HOME.

Local TV stations played up the violence by broadcasting scenes of police throwing demonstrators to the ground and applying force to arrest them.

Here is an account of a pair of legal observers trying to document the harassment and detainment of a group of young people by 6 policemen at 10th St and J with still and video cameras. The legal observers soon found themselves being harassed:

"Police circling became so insistent and constant, and the way ahead seemed so isolated, we turned back and decided to all go to the Welcome center and decide how to get people home from there. At any given time, there were typically 3 police-type vehicles driving by slowly, stopping near us, veering toward us, etc."

"As I would do when documenting harassment, I took pictures of the cars and of the officers if they drove up beside us. At times, they attempted to verbally intimidate, at others, they would continue to drive by slowly and/or stop beside us. We continued filming and taking pictures of them and their cars as they harassed. At one point an officer yelled that I had no right to be taking pictures of him. I said I had every right to document criminal behavior."

Prisoners were released at random in remote places in the middle of the night. This was especially alarming when one young girl of perhaps 16 was driven out to a deserted Hwy 99 and let out on the side of the road 30 or 40 miles out of town at 3:30 am. She had no way to get home, no way to phone for help, and no way to protect herself if harm came her way.

Are these the tactics of conscientious, concerned peace keepers who's job it is to protect the public? And what was the bill for this extensive gear, equipment and manpower?

Daniel Weintraub states, in the same article quoted earlier:

"The law enforcement tactics I saw last week are part of a growing trend. I first witnessed them in Los Angeles in
2000, at the national Democratic Convention. I have since read about the use of similar techniques at protest in other cities across the country.

The idea seems borrowed from Colin Powell's military doctrine of overwhelming force: Enough police armed with enough gear and taking and aggressive enough posture can stop trouble before it starts.... But we need to stop and consider the cost in dollars and in liberty.... Overall, the three law enforcement agencies deployed more than 1,000 officers at a cost that will approach $2 million." (The Bee reported earlier that the officers numbered 2,000 to 4,000).

Daniel Weintroub closes by saying, "The surround-block-and-herd tactics employed last week are an affront to free speech and the Constitution, and needn't be used on law-abiding American citizens who are doing nothing more than trying to speak their minds."

You may be asking why I am reporting on this in a publication that normally discusses only health issues?

Because this is what we all have to look forward to if Codex passes. Sure, Codex is about food laws, but the bottom line is that the restrictive Codex regulations will have to be enforced. And THIS is how.

The GM food edicts contained in Codex are about more than just our food supply and environment. Codex harmonization is really about controlling people to provide windfall profits for multi-national pharmaceutical companies and the governments that support them.

The protesters at the Sacramento Agricultural Ministerial Expo were exercising their constitutional rights. Yet they were treated like subversive criminals. Special laws, of which they were not informed, were made so they could be arrested "legally." All because they want to protect our food supply and our environment from contamination by genetically modified crops.

In addition to serious health and environmental concerns, THIS is what harmonization to Codex will bring. THIS is "Globalization" or "Global Union." THIS is "The New World Order."

Under Codex, senior citizens can be arrested and treated like criminals for simply having a jar of cream with DHEA, MSM, or pregnenolone in it. You won't be able to buy vitamin C with more than 60 mg. All the supplements you use and depend on will be "controlled substances" produced by a few pharmaceutical companies who, you can be sure won't have your best interests in mind regarding the ingredients or the price. The manufacturers you trust will be gone or transformed into puppets of the state.

Don't believe it? It just happened in Australia. The largest, quickest and most comprehensive recall of health care products in world history occurred there on April 29, 2003. The TGA (Australia's equivalent of the US FDA) served Pan Pharmaceuticals with an order to suspend its operations for a six month period. Although the TGA first targeted Pan's pharmaceutical drug for motion sickness, Travacalm, the recall was rapidly extended to Pan's health supplements. Items such as vitamin C, Echinacea, chamomile, calcium, etc.

The TGA shut down Pan and slapped a Class 1 Recall (reserved for substances that cause serious, irreversible health damage or death) over 1369 of their health products. That number soon rose to 1600.

To date, the TGA has not explained what the health problem was with the health supplements, nor did they release any findings of any danger in them, although no one had previously suffered adverse effects. However, all the supplements were incinerated in the same manner as toxic waste.

The media went on a "vitamin scandal" spree, and the public panicked. Grannies thought they were poisoned; nursing mothers feared they had harmed their babies. Health food stores, following TGA's instructions, cleared shelves of recalled products, leaving many shops bare.

Up until this time, Australians prided themselves on their freedom from government interference.

Now the battle is taking place in England and Canada. Yesterday, a critical vote took place in England in the British House of Commons who voted 7-6 in favor of the Standing Instrument which results in England's "harmonizing" their vitamin laws to the restrictive EU Food Supplement Directive, the same as Australia.

To insure the vote passed, a few hours before the vote, the ruling Labor Party removed committee members who opposed harmonization and replaced them with them with those obligated to vote according to the party.

The Labor Party had previously informed the citizens of England that they did not care if a million signatures were collected, nor if the entire country was against it, they intended to harmonize with the European Union.

Now Canada, our neighbor to the North, is about to harmonize to the same Codex rules that Australians have just experienced. To prepare the way, Canada had already classified many natural supplements as drugs. On June 18th, Health Canada published new vitamin regulations in the Gazette which harmonize Canada to Australia's TGA regulatory system for dietary supplements.

Lawsuits have been filed to overturn these regulations. But Canada has already announced that by Jan 1, 2004, it will restrict most natural health products, including herbal remedies, homeopathic medicines, vitamins, minerals, traditional medicines, probiotics, amino acids and essential fatty acids (such as Omega-3). All natural health products in Canada will require a product license before being marketed claiming it will bring about "improved, standardized labeling."

But don't be fooled by the "improved, standardized labeling" terminology. The aim is to regulate and prohibit most natural substances and put the manufacture of health supplements into the hands of huge multi-national pharmaceutical companies.

The U.S. is next on the slate! Sacramento served as a small microcosm of the brutal force that is advancing across the world. Let me remind you that Codex is not yet in force in America, yet the police behaved as if it is.

The level of police hostility and brutality was unprecedented for Sacramento and completely unnecessary. What will it be like when the stakes are higher? When harmless natural supplements are treated as drugs and those who possess them as criminals?

Is that a world you want to live in?

by Rufina James
http://therealessentials.com

You can read the Canadian announcement here:
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/english/media/releases/2003/2003_47.htm
 
Read about what happened in Australia here:
http://www.livingnow.com.au/
Click on "Stories" in the top bar. Scroll down to "Issues"
on the left and click on the "Pan" article.
 
IAHF is working closely with four Canadian organizations
that have filed lawsuits against Health Canada in an attempt
to overturn these illegal regulations which totally violate
the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. To learn more
about the global takeover of health freedoms and rights,
see: www.iahf.com

John Hammell, legislative activist, is asking for donations
to support the lawsuits in Canada. Learn all about IADSA,
the controlled opposition group that has only been going
through the motions of defending this industry while
actually leading us to the cliff.

Find out more at http://www.iahf.com/anh_lawsuit.html
Urge more people to sign on to the IAHF email list at:
http://www.iahf.com

Please donate to the ANH lawsuit via their website at
http://www.alliance-natural-health.org and to
IAHF: http://www.iahf.com and via:

International Advocates for Health Freedom
POB 10632
Blacksburg VA 24062
USA
http://www.iahf.com
http://iadsa-exposed.tripod.com
800-333-2553 N.America
540-961-0476 World

For further information:
http://iadsa-exposed.tripod.com
http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2003/2003_preprint_eu_01.html
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=33229

Copyright 2003 Rufina James
www.therealessentials.com

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