F William Engdahl

The ongoing international controversy over the widely-used glyphosate-based weed-killer Roundup and similar herbicides has largely been diverted as a misleading debate on whether glyphosate itself, the largest component of Monsanto’s Roundup, is carcinogenic in recommended doses. New major published studies by a group of biologists and toxicologists at France’s CAEN University reveals that the “adjuvants” or additional chemicals put into Roundup but concealed under company “trade secret” designation, are vastly more toxic than glyphosate alone.

By now it is commonplace that most people in the western industrial world link the corporation Monsanto with something not healthy nor quite good. This is a major reason that Monsanto in a friendly takeover by the German chemicals giant, Bayer AG, is determined to hide behind the skirts of Bayer. Amid a torrent of industry-financed positive propaganda around the use of genetically modified crops, amid claims they can solve world hunger, greatly reduce chemical use, and on and on, some basic geopolitical facts are useful to review.

On November 26 Israel’s Jerusalem Post reported a sensational offer from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to Israel’s Netanyahu conveyed via Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to the Israeli paper, Assad is ready to agree to a demilitarized zone of up to 40 kilometers from the Israeli border in the Golan Heights as part of a comprehensive agreement between the two countries in return for an Israeli guarantee it will not continue to try to remove Assad's regime from power.