Another Cosmos script Neil deGrasse Tyson read maybe he should have paid
more attention to regarding the situation with short-sighted
corporate monopolies misusing cherry-picked science to promote
their profits at the expense of all of us and the only planet we’ve got.
Talking about the fall of the ancient Mesopotamia civilization, the script Dr. Tyson read for Cosmos Episode 11, The Immortals, says: Continue reading
In his recent misstatements about GMO foods,
Neil deGrasse Tyson has fallen for what he called the misuse of the
authority of science, in
Episode 7 of Cosmos, the Clean Room, which recounted Clair
Patterson’s discovery of lead pollution by leaded gasoline.
That use of lead had been promoted and defended
by Robert E. Kehoe’s “scientific” papers.
The script Tyson read (but did not write) said: Continue reading
14 year old Rachel Parent destroys a pro-Monsanto-GMO TV host
on every point, from science to his ad hominem attacks against her.
He twists, he turns, he avoids admitting when he’s defeated, and he loses
bigtime.
No summary can do this justice.
Mat Agorist posted for Realfarmacy.com 30 August 2013 about the CNBC Lang & O’Leary show of 31 July 2013, 14 Year Old, Rachel Parent, Anti-GMO Activist, Destroys Establishment Shill, Kevin O’Leary, On Air
Meet Rachel Parent, a 14 year old activist, who knows her stuff! This brave girl should serve as a role model for all teens. If 10 percent of children had this girl’s drive and knowledge, we wouldn’t even be having this debate right now.
In this video Ms. Parent braves the establishment hack, Kevin O’Leary, and does outstanding. O’Leary hammers out the industry talking points like the good shill he is and Ms. Parent slams each and every one. Bravo Rachel Parent, thanks for doing what you do.
If you like the work of Rachel Parent and want to help, please visit her website at http://www.gmo-news.com.
Here’s the video:
Continue readingMutant pigweed here, mutant rootworm there, pretty soon no Monsanto pest protection anywhere.
Carey Gillam wrote for Reuters 28 August 2013, GMO corn failing to protect fields from pest damage: report
(Reuters)—Researchers in the key corn-growing state of Illinois are finding significant damage from rootworms in farm fields planted in a rotation with a genetically modified corn that is supposed to protect the crop from the pests, according to a new report.
Evidence gathered from fields in two Illinois counties suggests that pest problems are mounting as the rootworms grow ever more resistant to efforts to fight them, including crop rotation combined with use of the biotech corn, according to the report issued by Michael Gray, a professor of crop sciences at the University of Illinois.
Here’s the report, by Michael Gray in U. Illinois Bulletin, 27 August 2012, Severe Corn Rootworm Injury to Bt Hybrids in First-Year Corn Confirmed, Continue reading
Monsanto knew PCBs were toxic as it manufactured almost all of them, much like Roundup now. Monsanto drenched the town of Anniston, Alabama in PCBs and never told them. Guess where that pipeline through Georgia from Alabama to Florida starts? That’s right: Anniston, Alabama.
According to CDC
Toxicological Profile for Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs), November 2000,
“Approximately 99% of the PCBs used by U.S. industry were produced by the Monsanto Chemical Company in Sauget, Illinois, until production was stopped in August 1977.”
By Michael Grunwald in Washington Post Tuesday, January 1, 2002; Page A01, Monsanto Hid Decades Of Pollution: PCBs Drenched Ala. Town, But No One Was Ever Told ( original URL no longer works), Continue reading
If Monsanto’s crops are indistinguishable from non-GMO, aren’t natural crops prior art invalidating MON’s patents?
Ethan A. Huff wrote for NaturalNews.com 26 June 2013, Monsanto hypocrisy: GMOs supposedly identical to natural crops on safety, but unique for patent enforcement,
The biotechnology industry has pulled a fast one with regards to the legitimacy of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). Straddling both sides of the fence, multinational corporations like Monsanto continually claim that their GM monstrosities are “substantially equivalent” to natural crops when it comes to their safety. And yet at the very same time, this ilk also insists that its products are uniquely different from natural crops when it comes to enforcing its patents, a clearly hypocritical and duplicitous stance that proves the illegitimacy of the entire GMO business model.
On its corporate website, Monsanto clearly expresses its opinion that Continue reading
Will we listen to French farmer Paul François, who sued Monsanto for nerve damage due to inhaling Lasso weedkiller, and won last year? Monsanto appealed, but François just won
“Farmers need to understand that those who speak for them are businessmen who defend other interests, very lucrative for the businessmen, who do not care about farmers’ health or the health of those around us.”the appeal, too. Now the court is gauging losses to determine penalties for Monsanto.
This after back in 2009
France convicted Monsanto of lying
about its claims that Roundup was “biodegradable” and “left the soil clean”.
And Argentinean tobacco farmers
are suing Monsanto in New Castle County Court, Delaware, saying
Monsanto
“knowingly poisoned them with herbicides and pesticides and subsequently caused ”devastating birth defects” in their children”.
These same Monsanto herbicides and pesticides are sprayed
on most fields around here, and they’re just as much
poisons here as in Argentina or France.
Paul François answered questions from Pierre Penin for Sud Ouest (southwest France) 8 February 2013,
Continue reading
On May 25, activists around the world will unite to March Against
Monsanto.
In Savannah, OccupyMonsanto says:
2pm at the Fountain in Forsyth Park at noon, with photo ops, educational tables, music and more — join us and send a powerful message to one of the most polluting corporations in the world!Oher Georgia events include Athens, Brunswick, and Atlanta.
Here’s
how to organize a march.
Why?
David Knowles wrote for New York Daily News 8 May 2013,
VIDEO: Stars align in protest against food giant Monsanto over GMO crops:
Foes of the conglomerate have produced a video shining light on the supposed dangers of genetically modified crops. Bill Maher, Danny Devito and Dave Matthews will be among the celebrities speaking out.
The video: Continue reading“Here in America you don’t get the right to know whether you’re eating genetically modified organisms,” Dave Matthews says in the video that asks viewers to participate in a global day of protest against the company on May 25.
Monsanto is always hiding behind something, starving children (while selling their parents crops that fail all at once), the Great God Efficiency, or now, medical research. Will Clarence Thomas recuse himself this time on this Supreme Court seed patent, Bowman v Monsanto? Will Monsanto manufacture enough Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) to win anyway, or will the other SCOTUS judges rule wisely this time?
Andrew Pollack wrote for the New York Times 13 February 2013, Farmer’s Supreme Court Challenge Puts Monsanto Patents at Risk,
Monsanto says that a victory for Mr. Bowman would allow farmers to essentially save seeds from one year’s crop to plant the next year, eviscerating patent protection. In Mr. Bowman’s part of Indiana, it says, a single acre of soybeans can produce enough seeds to plant 26 acres the next year.
Such a ruling would “devastate innovation in biotechnology,” the company wrote in its brief. “Investors are unlikely to make such investments if they cannot prevent purchasers of living organisms containing their invention from using them to produce unlimited copies.”…
The decision might also apply to live vaccines, cell lines and DNA used for research or medical treatment, and some types of nanotechnology.
Yeah, yeah, it could. But it would be quite easy for SCOTUS to say this ruling is about seeds.
Many organizations have filed briefs in support of Monsanto’s position — universities worried about incentives for research, makers of laboratory instruments and some big farmer groups like the American Soybean Association, which say seed patents have spurred crop improvements. The Justice Department is also supporting Monsanto’s argument.
And the American Soybean Association represents big growers who plant Monsanto seeds. Too bad they don’t realize they’d make more profits if they didn’t have to pay for those seeds every year even when Monsanto jacks up the price ( 43% in 2009), plus pay for the expensive pesticides that go on them, and the expensive huge tractor equipment to farm at the scale Monsanto demands. Another group that should know better weighs in:
Continue reading
Fox News hired Jane Akre and a couple of other reporters as an
investigative unit and did a snazzy promo about that.
The first case they investigated was Monsanto’s bovine growth hormone, RBGH.
This is the whistleblower story behind the
Fox Can Lie lawsuit.
ITN in the U.K. reporting about Health Canada’s report on bovine growth hormone:
Monsanto’s engineered growth hormone did not comply with safety requirements. It could be absorbed by the body, and therefore did have implications for human health. Mysteriously, that conclusion was deleted from the final, published version of their report.
That was for a product that U.S. EPA had approved with little or no testing. Fox’s investigative unit had the story, but Monsanto threatened to sue Fox. Watch the video for the details.
Eventually, Akre sued Fox. She won, but Fox won on appeal. An appeal that established that Fox can lie.
-jsq
PS: Owed to Paul Hollands.