New GM Watch Website After Cyber Attacks

New GM Watch website rises after relentless cyber attacks

August 9, 8:46 AMLA Environmental Health Examiner NJ Jaeger
http://www.examiner.com/x-5148-LA-Environmental-Health-Examiner~y2009m8d9-New-GMWatch-website-rises-after-relentless-cyber-attacks

The newly designed GMWatch website, launched today, will carry the latest news on the issue of genetically modified (GM) food and crops along with the deceptive PR campaigns being used to promote GM worldwide. The new website: www.gmwatch.org, replaces the one forced off the web by 14 months of cyber attacks. A network engineer brought in to advise on the damage described these as the worst attacks he'd seen in his 20 years in the industry.

The new site has been designed to be user-friendly, making it easy to navigate what George Monbiot has called "the world's most comprehensive database on the impacts and the politics of genetically engineered crops." This includes GMWatch's archive of nearly a decade of news and analysis from GMWatch's daily, weekly and monthly lists, including material translated into several other languages.

GMWatch has been at the forefront of the global campaign of opposition to the imposition of GM food and crops, and the new site includes detailed guides to:
how the media is manipulated by wildly misleading claims about GM; *the myth-makers: the people hyping and promoting GM crops world-wide; *the GM corporations and their toxic legacy of global pollution and deceit.

Jonathan Matthews, founder of GMWatch, commented, "Our campaign and this site are all about busting the myths about GM crops. The reality is that this is a technology shrouded in risks and uncertainties. It has failed to significantly increase the productivity of food and feed crops or deliver on almost any of the extraordinary claims made for it - but it is being relentlessly pushed by people, institutions and even governments with massive vested interests in its acceptance. The GMWatch website is the place to go for those who want to get at the reality behind the spin and hyperbole."

GMWatch co-editor Claire Robinson said, "Establishing the new GMWatch website alongside its sister site GMWatch Spinprofiles, and the BanGMFood campaign has been an enormous task, and we'd like to thank all our fellow campaigners who've supported that process, not least the volunteers who helped transfer our enormous archive. They've done an amazing job of work and we've now got our best ever campaigning armoury for attacking the web of deceit over GM foods."
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[Additional notes from GMWatch provided below by nlpwessex.org]

MORE INFORMATION

[1] Interview about attacks on GMWatch
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-test/334-interview-about-attacks-on-gm-watch

[2] Comments on GMWatch
http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/Comments_on_GMWatch

[3] GMWatch Spinprofiles is at
http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/GM_Watch:_Portal
It's the GM portal of a free online index cataloging the details of industry-friendly experts, and the institutes, think tanks, and front groups they work out of in their battle to influence public opinion and public policy. It's an international undertaking, written collaboratively with wiki technology, aimed at tackling PR and propaganda activities on a wide range of important issues.

[4] The BanGMFood campaign is at
http://www.bangmfood.org/
It explains:
why we need to act - with detailed references to scientific studies showing the harm caused by GM foods;
how GM foods are being introduced by stealth;
why GM and non-GM food crops can't co-exist;
what we can do to challenge the imposition of GM foods, primarily in a UK/EU context.

[5] GM MYTHMAKING IN AFRICA: GMWATCH SPECIAL
As Hillary Clinton and Tom Vilsack headed to Kenya to promote GM agriculture and visit KARI, GMWatch flagged up the dangerous myth-making being used to fool people into believing in mythical GM solutions to some of the continent's most intractable agricultural problems. KARI provides a perfect example of GM myth-making. As the US Working Group on the Food Crisis pointed out in criticising the visit, USAID-Monsanto-KARI spent $6 million on a virus-resistant GM sweet potato project which despite generating hundreds of column inches of hype and false claims of success turned out to be a complete failure. Local varieties outperformed the GM varieties, while researchers developed a virus-resistant hybrid through conventional breeding for a fraction of the cost. A GM cassava project for Africa also failed miserably while conventional breeding again delivered everything and more that was it was claimed only GM could deliver.
More: http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11365:gm-myth-making-in-africa-gmwatch-special

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