-Caveat Lector- Looks like the poor French terrorist is going to go to jail for a few months for destroying restaraunts and a rice-breeding lab. So sad ... NOT!
-------------------------- http://www.purefoods.org/other/bove.html José Bové is a veteran activist who poses as a French farmer. His most recent caper involved the demolition of a half-built McDonalds in Millau. During his trial he threatened that a guilty verdict would bring even more violence. "It would astonish me greatly if the judge dares to order us to be arrested after the trial," he said. "If so, the state would be making a great mistake, triggering an unprecedented situation. . ." Bové claims to be a "family farmer" but how he finds the time to "farm" with all his international travel and activism is beyond any reasonable person's comprehension. He grew up in Berkeley, California where his scientist parents were 'studying' at the University of California for seven years during the Sixties. Not exactly a family farm history. In fact, France's Elle Magazine, noted Bové as "the man who fooled us most, who perpetuated fraud" in 1999 by pretending to be a farmer. (Dec. 20, 1999 issue). In 1968, Bové moved back to France and at the age of 19 started his career as a professional activist protesting against the French military. According to Time Magazine (December 6, 1999), Bové refused to perform his military service and dropped out of university to immerse himself in various leftist political and ecological movements. In 1975, Bové moved to Larzac, France with a group of like-minded activists as part of the French "Flower Power" movement to start a farming commune. This commune raised sheep and produced Roquefort cheese (the type he smuggled into the US and illegally distributed in Seattle to protest world trade) with government subsidies. However, Bové was never a full-time farmer; rather, he spent his time working with a local peasant movement organizing against the planned extension of an army base in southern France. Arrested for "invading" the base during a 1976 protest, Bové spent three weeks in prison. Following his prison time, Bové attended 'direct action' training camp in Libya sponsored by dictator Muammar Quadafi. After this training, in 1987 Bové founded the radical Confederation Paysanne, a leftist peasant farmers union, and began launching targeted commando actions against the government in support of increased socialism and French peasant-style subsistence agriculture. In Feburary 1988 he was one of the leaders who organized a protest called "Plowing the Champs Elysees" in Paris against the European set-aside policies. In September 1990 he led protests and hunger strikes demanding more government subsidies for sheep farmers (he must have needed more money to fund his political programs, and was unable to sustain them from his group's unsustainable Roquefort farm). In September 1991, he picketed the airport of Lazac and prevented French Prime Minister Jospin's plane from landing. In August 1995, he joined Greenpeace on the Rainbow Warrior to protest nuclear trials. Also, in 1995, Bové led protests in France destroying property and attacking French government offices smashing windows, setting fires and charging local police office gates with tractors. In 1997, Bové began mounting his protests against biotechnology crops. Since that time he has been implicated in the destruction of a Novartis seed production facility and the greenhouses of a public research center. Bové and his group are also credited with hijacking shipments of biotechnology-grown corn. Bové spent another three weeks in prison in 1999 after he lead activists in the destruction of a McDonalds in Normandy. Bové is now the darling of the organic and anti-biotechnology movement. In Seattle he was hosted by Ralph Nader's organization at a rally, conveniently held in front of a local McDonalds. The McDonalds was, of course, vandalized. Bové has also been the guest of anti-technology, organic farming advocate Mark Ritchie and his IATP group. During the WTO meeting in Seattle, a US farm group sent Nader a letter asking that he disavow the violence started by Bové and cease sponsoring street rallies in front of such targets as McDonalds. (Nader never responded.) Bové supports government control of agriculture, high subsidies and tariff barriers to protect his form of agriculture and has called for the creation of an independent world court protect this system. For his ties to the overpriced organic movement, his acts of vandalism and his blatant lies, we are proud to pronounce José Bové the Pure Fool of the Month. http://www.purefoods.org/other/bove.html -------------------------------------------- http://www.planetrice.net/newspub/story.cfm?id=1272 Eight Months Prison Recommended for Jose Bove Political discourses on GM crops are not relevant in court, prosecutor says. Breaking of law must be punished, whether by Bove or anyone else. PlanetRice by Tom Hargrove, Editor-in-Chief November 26, 2001 MONTPELLIER, FRANCE--The state prosecutor requested on Nov. 23 that militant farmer Jose Bove be sentenced to 8 months in prison for ripping up a genetically modified rice field at a test laboratory. The fiery French sheep farmer and founder of the left-wing farmers' union Paysanne admitted in an appeals court that he destroyed the crops in June 1999, but only "because farmers, the people, and politicians all oppose genetically modified foods," the Associated Press reported. He said that he did nothing wrong tearing up the rice plants and will continue to destroy GM crops. Bove and two others were convicted in March for destroying more than 1,000 rice plants in a greenhouse operated by CIRAD, an international agricultural research sponsored by the French government near Montpellier, in southern France. All three appealed. The flamboyant Jose Bove--who sports a colorful walrus moustache like the French comic hero Asterix--became a rallying figure for anti-globalization efforts around the world after leading the ransacking of a French McDonalds restaurant in 1999. Bove was given a 10-month suspended sentence in March and he and two other defendants were ordered to pay a fine of 600,000 francs (US$83,232) to CIRAD. Bove has been involved in the destruction of GM maize, and also helped destroy 3 hectares of GM soybeans at a Monsanto experimental farm in Brazil. He has demanded a complete ban on GM crops in France and threatened to begin uprooting test fields across the country if the government does not stop GM tests, PlanetRice reported in August. Plan to sail into WTO talks in Qatar scuttled Bove helped conceive an aborted plan to sail six boats loaded with anti-globalization activists into Doha, Qatar, to protest the World Trade Organization meeting there, the Washington Post reported on Nov. 12. The plan was scrapped after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon because the protesters were loath to risk being associated in the public mind with Osama bin Laden and his followers. The Post reported "awkward divisions between the anti-globalization forces and the governments of poor nations whose interests the activists purport to champion." Food safety is an example. Like many Europeans, Bove wants WTO rules changed so that countries can more aggressively restrict imports of meat, grain, fruit, and vegetables for health reasons. The restrictions would stem from products having been genetically modified or treated with hormones. "The people who want to put a product on the market ought to have to show that the product is safe," Bove said. "For the moment, it's the country refusing to import a product that must show the product is bad. We have to reverse that." Bove's view draws vehement criticism from officials of developing nations, the Post reported. Officials fear the EU, would use health concerns as an excuse to keep their farm products out of Europe, thus protecting the region's farmers. Judge calls rice destruction "premeditated" Prosecutor Jean-Claude Plantard said on Nov. 23 that Bove's destruction of the rice plants was "a premeditated act," that Bove had repeatedly committed offenses, and that his arguments were irrelevant in the eyes of the law. "Political discourses on GM are not relevant in court. Every breach of public order must be punished, as the law requires, whether they have been committed by Bove or anyone else," Plantard said. The prosecutor requested a 6-month prison sentence for Rene Riesel, one of the three defendants, who has since severed his ties from the anti-GM activists. Riesel, who is now a local official in the Lozere region of southern France, stormed out of the courtroom Thursday, saying he was "tired of hearing the same speech by Bove." But Plantard, angered by Riesel's failure to show up in court Friday, said he "should assume responsibility" for the destruction. "The squabbles between him and Bove do not concern us," he said. Plantard recommended a suspended prison sentence for the third defendant, Dominique Soullier, also a local official in the nearby Herault region. The prosecutor said the judge could decide the appropriate suspended term. It is not clear when the verdict will be rendered, but some speculate it will be on Dec. 20. Damage in the GM rice attack Bove proudly admitted to spearheading the 1999 CIRAD GM rice, PlanetRice reported last March. "The justice system has not understood a thing about the dangers that face us all," he said. CIRAD called the French radical's protest "misguided" and said that it provides an unbiased scientific view on GM foods, plus an alternative to research by multinational companies. CIRAD lawyers said the rice destruction caused 4 million francs (US$550,000) of damage. "This technology has just been thrown together," Bove told reporters outside the court. "Scientists know only 1% of the functioning of genes in organisms and they are imposing technologies today with no certainties, no guarantees. "Unfortunately, sometimes you have to commit illegal actions to bring matters to public consciousness," Bove told reporters in Montpellier. Criminal, or agricultural Robin Hood? Many Europeans consider Bove today's agricultural Robin Hood. The radical French farmer is fluent in English, initially learned during his first 7 years spend in the United States where his parents studied biochemistry at the University of California at Berkeley. English skills have helped Bove preach his message internationally. Time magazine published a colorful description of Bove's 1999 "commando attack" on McDonald's: "Armed with crowbars, sledgehammers, wrenches, and screwdrivers, these crusaders for the French way of life dismantled the fast-food franchise. "The broader battle cry of these rural Robin Hoods is their rejection of 'la mal-bouffe'--lousy food, as symbolized by the famous American burger chain." Carted off in handcuffs, Bove spent 20 days in prison and emerged as one of France's most popular heroes. Soon he was giving countless TV and newspaper interviews and crisscrossing the country to address admiring groups of farmers, consumers, and ecologists. "The judge did us a great service by throwing me in jail," Bove said. "We couldn't have asked for better publicity." ------------------------------------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/06/magazine/06QUESTIONS.html QUESTIONS FOR JOSÉ BOVÉ Unhappy Meals By EMILY EAKIN January 6, 2002 Your activism -- against a local McDonald's, most famously -- has made you a national hero in France. But it has also gotten you in trouble. Last month you were sentenced to six months in jail for helping to destroy genetically modified rice plants. What are you trying to accomplish? Bove: Listen, the best answer I can give you is that when the future of the human race is in jeopardy due to bad decisions -- like the decision to develop genetically modified plants -- and when debate doesn't solve the problem, you're obliged to disobey the law. The example I follow is that of Henry David Thoreau, one of the first to apply the principle of civil disobedience. In your new book, ''The World Is Not for Sale: Farmers Against Junk Food,'' you call genetic modification a ''technique of tyranny.'' What do you mean by that? Bove: The moment you have G.M. seeds in a field, the other fields around it are inevitably going to be contaminated. You can't grow conventional corn next to the genetically modified stuff. The same with soybeans. This imposes on all farmers a single kind of agriculture that is contrary to the natural biodiversity. So the technique itself is totalitarian. The press has portrayed your attack on McDonald's as a kind of anti-Americanism. But you dispute that claim. Bove: Of course. The same thing that is happening in the United States is happening in France and everywhere else: big conglomerates are trying to standardize food production and consumption to their exclusive advantage. It's not at all a question of the company's national origins. Perhaps Americans just get defensive, because the French always seem to think their culture is so, well, superior. Bove: That's one of the problems with the United States. Criticism directed at a particular issue is automatically taken as a global criticism of the United States and its population. There's this impulse to justify and defend everything without realizing that it's through debate that people begin to understand each other. Do you ever eat fast food yourself? Have you ever had a Big Mac? Bove: No. It's not the kind of food I like. How do you know it's so bad if you've never had it? Bove: I know how the hamburgers are made. I know where the meat comes from. I know what kind of vegetables are used and how they're cultivated. I know how everything is formatted and industrialized. This kind of food has absolutely no relation to what I consider food to be. Food is something that's different every time, that varies from place to place. So you avoid fast food not on political principle but because you don't like the way it tastes? Bove: It's everything: the desire of these multinationals to impose this kind of food on the entire planet, their social organization in which employees are treated like pawns, their way of destroying local agriculture. Taste is one reason but not the only one. How do you explain the fact that millions of people all over the world seem to love the stuff? Bove: The paradox is that in the United States, more and more people are trying other options. In some countries where fast food is taking off, I think there's a sense of buying into the American dream. People don't realize that in the United States, fast food is nobody's dream anymore. Don't you have a weakness for any kind of junk food? I eat quite well, but I do have a weakness for French fries. Bove: French fries are not necessarily bad for you. It depends on the kind of potatoes you use. What do you do when you're stuck for hours in an airport? Bove: Even in airports, there are places where you can eat more or less properly. McDonald's just announced it has bought the rights to use the French cartoon figure Asterix in ads in France. You've often been compared to Asterix, a symbol of Gallic independence who also happens to have a handlebar moustache. Did you take McDonald's action personally? Bove: Well, I don't think it's an accident that they did this. Any truth to the rumors that you were planning to run for president? Bove: No. Those were false rumors put out by people who thought I could present an alternative. But I'd rather devote my energy to developing political opposition than to trying to unite the votes of the disaffected. Before we go, one last question: It's lunch time in France. What are you going to eat? Bove: Celery. --------------------------------------- French militant farmer Jose Bove back in court Associated Press November 22, 2001 MONTPELLIER, France (AP) _ Militant farmer Jose Bove returned to court in southern France on Thursday to appeal a conviction for destroying a genetically modified rice field at a test laboratory. The French anti-globalization activist, who arrived at the Montpellier courthouse surrounded by 800 supporters, admitted to destroying the crops in 1999 because farmers, the people, and politicians all oppose genetically modified foods. Bove, who shot to fame in 1999 after leading the ransacking of a French McDonald's restaurant that was under construction, told the court that he had done nothing wrong and would continue to destroy GM test crops. In March, Bove and two others were convicted for destroying more than 1,000 rice plants in a greenhouse operated by Cirad, an agricultural research group, near Montpellier. The three were handed suspended sentences and ordered to pay a fine of 600,000 francs (dlrs 83,232) to the company. Rene Riesel, one of the three defendants, unexpectedly rose up in his seat during the hearing and told the judge he was leaving the courtroom. Riesel, who is now a local official in the Lozere region of southern France, said he was tired of hearing the same speech by Bove and disagreed with the actions of anti-GM activists. The trial was expected to last through Friday. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE Valentine eCards with Yahoo! Greetings! http://greetings.yahoo.com <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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