DOJ Mysteriously Quits Monsanto Antitrust Investigation

Mother Jones
Tom Philpott

There's an age-old tradition in Washington of making unpopular announcements when no one's listening—like, you know, the days leading up to Thanksgiving. That's when the Obama administration sneaked a tasty dish to the genetically modified seed/pesticide industry.

This treat involves the unceremonious end of the Department of Justice's antitrust investigation into possible anticompetitive practices in the US seed market, which it had begun in January 2010. It's not hard to see why DOJ would take a look. For the the crops that cover the bulk of US farmland like corn, soy, and cotton, the seed trade is essentially dominated by five companies: Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Bayer, and Dow. And a single company, Monsanto, supplies nearly all genetically modified traits now so commonly used in those crops, which it licenses to its rivals for sale in their own seeds.

What's harder to figure out is why the DOJ ended the investigation without taking any action—and did so with a near-complete lack of public information. The DOJ didn't even see fit to mark the investigation's end with a press release. News of it emerged from a brief item Monsanto itself issued the Friday before Thanksgiving, declaring it had "received written notification" from the DOJ antitrust division that it had ended its investigation "without taking any enforcement action."

A DOJ spokesperson confirmed to me that the agency had "closed its investigation into possible anticompetitive practices in the seed industry," but would divulge no details. "In making its decision, the Antitrust Division took into account marketplace developments that occurred during the pendency of the investigation," she stated via email. I asked what precisely those "marketplace developments" were. "I don’t have anything else for you," she replied. Monsanto, too, is being tight-lipped—a company spokesperson said the company had no statement to make beyond the above-linked press release.

Diana Moss, vice president and senior research fellow of the American Antitrust Institute, told me that the DOJ's information blackout on the case is unusual—and frustrating. "To have a two-year investigation and close it without a peep in our view does a disservice." Moss is the author of a 2009 paper concluding that the GM seed market "requires antitrust enforcement and/or legislative relief." To get an idea of how far this market has come under the control of just a handful of companies, think of genetically modified seeds as computers—hardware and software. In this rather common but apt analogy, the actual seed is the hardware and the genetically modified traits they carry—like the ability to withstand herbicides, as in Monsanto's Roundup Ready traits—are the software.

Getting market share data for an industry like seeds is a maddening task. No government agency, including the US Department of Agriculture, tracks it. But it's not hard to establish that a few companies dominate it, with Monsanto at the top. Indeed, Monsanto alone essentially controls the software-like part of the market, traits: According to Monsanto's rival, DuPont, Monsanto traits end up in 98 percent of the GM soybeans grown in the US and 79 percent of the corn—a claim Monsanto doesn't dispute. In a 2009 paper, Iowa State University economist GianCarlo Moschini reported that Monsanto traits are in 78.9 percent of the GM cotton grown here.

What about the hardware side, the seeds themselves? Below is a chart from the agribiz-trade web site AgWeb, showing market-share trends in corn and soy seeds from 2004 to 2011. In corn, we can see that DuPont, Monsanto, Syngenta, and Dow together own more than 80 percent of the market, and the share owned by "local and regional companies" fell by approximately half over the period, and now stands at less than 15 percent. In soy, the same four large companies now together control more than 70 percent of the market, with both "local and regional companies" and "publics/saved seeds" showing sharp declines over the period.

The USDA does keep market share numbers for the cottonseed market (pdf here), and in the 2012 growing season, Monsanto (through its cottonseed line Delta & Pine), Bayer, and Dow (through its Phytogen subsidiary) owned 80 percent of the market among the three of them.

1.6 Million Votes Remain Uncounted in California

NoMoreFakeNews
Jon Rappoport

DID PROP 37 REALLY LOSE OR WAS IT VOTE FRAUD?

Hold your horses.

On election night, not long after the polls closed in California, the announcement came out: Prop 37 was losing.

A little while later, it was all over. 37 had gone down to defeat.

But is that the whole story? No.

As of 2:30PM today, Thursday, November 8th, two days after the election, many votes in California remain uncounted.

I tried to find out how many.

It turns out that the Secretary of State of CA, responsible for elections in the state, doesn’t know.

I was told all counties in California have been asked, not ordered, to report in with those figures. It’s voluntary.

So I picked out a few of the biggest counties and called their voter registrar offices. Here are the boggling results:

Santa Clara County: 180,000 votes remain uncounted.

Orange County: 241,336 votes remain uncounted.

San Diego County: 475,000 votes remain uncounted.

LA County: 782,658 votes remain uncounted.

In just those four counties, 1.6 million votes remain uncounted.

The California Secretary of State’s website indicates that Prop 37 is behind by 559,776 votes.

So in the four counties I looked into, there are roughly three times as many uncounted votes as the margin of Prop 37′s defeat.

And as I say, I checked the numbers in only four counties. There are 54 other counties in the state. Who knows how many votes they still need to process?

So why is anyone saying Prop 37 lost?

People will say, “Well, it’s all about projections. There are experts. They know what they’re doing. They made a prediction…”

Really? Who are those experts? I have yet to find them.

For big elections, the television networks rely on a private consortium called the National Election Pool (NEP). NEP does projections and predictions. Did NEP make the premature call on Prop 37? So far I see no evidence one way or the other.

NEP makes some calls for the television networks, but NEP is composed of CBS, CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC, and AP. It could hardly be called an independent source of information for those networks.

NEP has AP (Associated Press) do the actual vote tabulating, and NEP also contracts work out to Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International to do exit polls and projections based on those polls.

Edison Media Research did the exit polls in the state of Washington for this election. How? They surveyed 1493 people by phone. Based on that, I assume they made all the projections for elections in that state, even though there is no in-person voting in Washington, and voters can submit their ballots by mail, postmarked no later than election Tuesday. So how could Edison know anything worth knowing or projecting on election night?

Both Edison Research and Mitofsky were involved in the 2004 election scandal (Kerry-Bush), in which their exit polls confounded network news anchors, because the poll results were so far off from the incoming vote-counts.

Edison and Mitofsky issued a later report explaining how the disparity could have occurred; they tried to validate their own exit-poll data and the vote-count, which was like explaining a sudden shift in ocean tides by saying clouds covered the moon. It made no sense.

So if NEP did the premature Prop 37 projections that handed 37 a resounding loss, there is little reason to accept their word.

We’re faced with a scandal here. An early unwarranted projection against Prop 37 was made, when so many votes were still uncounted.

Those votes are still uncounted.

Why should we believe anything that comes next?

Jon Rappoport

The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

CA Prop 37 Scorecard...Devils And Angels

Rense
Editor's Note: Vote with your dollars, folks.

YouTube Removes Undercover Video Showing Whole Foods GMO Misinformation

Natural Society
Anthony Gucciardi

Youtube has pulled an undercover ‘Organic Spies’ video questioning Whole Foods employees as to whether or not any of the products within Whole Foods contained GMO ingredients. Created to show how even the employees themselves are misinformed (or even dishonest) about the very real presence of Monsanto’s GMOs in a store like Whole Foods that is supposed to promote health and wellness, the Organic Spies video received over 100,000 views in a few short days.

The video has since been removed due to apparently ‘violating the Terms of Service’, according to the genetic Youtube message that appears in place of the original video. As Infowars.com’s Aaron Dykes explains, this could be due to a third party complaint (such as Whole Foods demanding it be taken down), but it is not known as YouTube no longer tells the user of the third party identity. In other words, videos like these can be taken down without a trace of who is responsible.

You can see a re-upload of the video below:

One thing is clear, however. Whole Foods definitely has its eye on the video, attempting to perform ‘damage’ control through PR statements. Whole Foods even responded to the video after it became viral on the internet, stating on their blog that they certainly do carry GMOs within their store and that their employees questioned in the video were misinformed:

“The YouTube video showing our store Team Members giving conflicting responses to a question about GMOs reminds us that while we try to keep all our 70,000 Team Members up-to-speed on the latest information, clearly we need to do more. Some products in our stores DO contain GMOs – just like any other food store in the country, due to the pervasiveness of GMOs…”

Whole Foods Should Abandon GMOs, Monsanto

Just to be clear, I do believe that Whole Foods offers consumers a pretty considerable selection of organic non-GMO options at their stores. Many items contain the Non-GMO Project verified sticker, and they are certainly multitudes more in touch with real food than the average grocer. That said, it is important that we always keep corporations in line when it comes to protecting the health of ourselves and our families.

Ever since the recent French GMO study found that Monsanto’s GMOs (and Roundup) were contributing to tumor growth and organ damage, the international alarm over GMOs has been louder than ever. This is the perfect time to spread the word over carriers like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s who still carry GMOs within their ‘natural health’ stores. After all, GMOs are not natural by any stretch of the word.

The success of the Organic Spies video signifies a serious paradigm shift in the way the average individual looks at an average business. Whole Foods, like virtually all other corporations who focus on selling direct to customer, depends entirely on the purchases of the consumer. If consumers literally demand that Whole Foods removes tumor-linked GMOs from their stories, stopping a major flow of income to Monsanto and other biotech giants, then they will be forced to comply.

Monsanto Throws $2.89 Million More Toward Stopping GE Food Labeling

Food Integrity Campaign
Sarah Damian

We're less than two months away from the November election – when California's Proposition 37 could become the country's first law mandating the labeling of genetically engineered (GE). But the law won’t happen if Monsanto or other Big Ag companies have anything to say about it.

According to the $2.89 million last Friday to defeat Proposition 37, making the GE crop producer's contributions against the labeling measure total $7.1 million.

From the campaign press release:

Other major pesticide companies also just made major additional contributions to defeat Proposition 37, including DuPont ($874,800), Dow AgroSciences ($815,200), Bayer CropScience ($381,600), BASF Plant Science ($357,700) and Syngenta ($178,700).

“Monsanto wants to buy this election so they can keep hiding what’s really in our food,” said Gary Ruskin, campaign manager of the Yes on Proposition 37 campaign. “They are on the losing side of history. Californians want the right to know what’s in our food, and we will win it.”

The “Big 6” pesticide firms (Monsanto, DuPont, Bayer, Dow, BASF and Syngenta) have contributed $19 million of the $32 million that the No on 37 campaign has raised.

There are at least 40 food and pesticide companies that have contributed significantly to the "No on 37" campaign – companies with products containing GE crops/ingredients and that apparently prefer their customers to remain uninformed about what exactly they're eating.

The same hackneyed reasoning for opposing GE labeling showed up again in a recent Los Angeles Times story:

Opponents say the label would unnecessarily dampen further [GE crop] development that is intended to feed a growing global population dependent on the U.S., the largest exporter of corn and soybean.

FIC has blogged repeatedly on why promoting GE food as the answer to the world's hunger problems is a misleading PR tactic. For more updates on Monsanto (a.k.a. frequent violator of food integrity), follow the FIC blog here.

Sarah Damian is New Media Associate for the Government Accountability Project, the nation's leadingwhistleblower protection and advocacy organization.

Which ‘Natural’ Food Companies Are Fighting the Effort to Label GMOs?

From the Trenches

Huffington Post  On Nov. 6, California voters will have the opportunity to vote on historic Proposition 37, which would mandate the labeling of genetically-engineered foods. At a time when it’s hard to get a large percentage of Americans to agree on almost anything, polls show that as many as 90 percent of us want genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) labeled. More than 40 other nations, including the entire European Union, already require disclosure. But Monsanto and its allies are dedicated to keeping consumers in the dark and are pouring tens of millions of dollars into a disinformation campaign intended to defeat Prop 37.

You might expect the biotech industry to try to block a measure that would require foods that contain GMOs to say so on their packages. After all, a growing body of scientific research is indicating that GMOs might be far more dangerous than was previously imagined. But Monsanto’s allies in the effort to defeat Prop 37 include some unexpected culprits. It can be shocking to realize that some of the most trusted names in the naturalfood world are in bed with Monsanto.

Naked Juice is owned by PepsiCo, which has donated $1.7 million to Monsanto’s efforts. Honest Tea, Odwalla and Simply Orange are owned by Coca-Cola, which has donated another million dollars. Alexia and Lightlife are owned by ConAgra, which has put in more than $1 million.

You won’t find this mentioned anywhere on the Kashi product packaging, but Kashi, as well as Gardenburger and Morningstar Farms, is owned by Kellogg, which has already coughed up more than $600,000 to defeat Prop 37.

Kashi has already been in plenty of trouble on the GMO front this year. A few months ago, a number of natural foods stores stopped carrying Kashi cereals when it came to their attention that the “soy used in most Kashi products is genetically modified, and that when the USDA tested the grains used there were found to be pesticides that are known carcinogens and hormone disruptors.”

In an attempt to defend itself, Kashi released a YouTube video that announced that:

“While it’s likely that some of our foods contain GMOs, the main reason for that is because in North America, well over 80 percent of many crops, including soybeans are grown using GMOs … Factors outside our control such as pollen drift from nearby crops

… have led to an environment where GMOs are not sufficiently controlled.”

This seemingly reasonable defense — that the only reason GMOs are found in Kashi products is because GMOs are widespread in the environment — might be valid if the problem was only trace GMOs, which lead to a product being less than 1 percent genetically engineered. But when theCornucopia Institute tested Kashi’s Go Lean cereal, which gets its protein from soy, they found that the soy was 100 percent genetically engineered.

There are other natural foods heroes whose profits are being used to try to keep us in the dark. Silk soy milk carries the “Non-GMO Project Verified” seal on its package. But Silk is owned by Dean Foods, which has donated more than a quarter million dollars to Monsanto’s efforts to defeat Prop 37.

The list of sell-outs who masquerade as bastions of organics is disappointingly long. R. W. Knudsen and Santa Cruz Organics are owned by Smucker, which has donated $388,000 to killing Prop 37. Cascadian Farm, Larabar and Muir Glen are owned by General Mills, which has put more than half a million dollars into the effort.

The good news is that even with large agribusiness companies purchasing natural and organic brands and then betraying consumers by funding the attack on GMO labeling, Prop 37 still stands an excellent chance of passing.

And not everyone has sold out, not by a long shot. There are still some authentic heroes in the natural food industry. Nature’s Path, Dr. Bronner’s, Nutiva and Lundberg Rice stand out among the companies that are contributing to the effort to pass Prop 37 and ensure your right to know what’s in your food. Organic Valley, Amy’s and Eden Foods are also standing up for your right to know. And the owner of a natural health website, Joseph Mercola (mercola.com), has donated nearly a million dollars to the good fight.

If you want to know more, the Cornucopia Institute has released a shopper’s guide to the companies that are donating on both sides of Prop 37.

At present, it’s not easy to know whether there are GMOs in your food. The Non-GMO Shopping Guide put out by the Institute for Responsible Technology is a great support. But the most important thing you can do is to help pass Proposition 37.

If Californians pass Prop 37 in November, it will have enormous implications to the food system throughout North America.

Ignorance, in some cases, may be bliss. But in the case of GMOs, the ignorance of not knowing what is in your food is not bliss, it’s subservience to Monsanto and its allies. And it could mean a lifetime of devastating health problems for you and your children.

It’s going to be a battle. Let’s win this one for ourselves, for the earth, and for all future generations.

Paraguay ‘Coup’: Monsanto’s Job?

Liberty Cryer

The democratically-elected leader of Paraguay was voted out of power by a mostly right-wing parliament after a brief trial. Many believe it was a coup, largely orchestrated from outside, while the president’s successor is trying to validate the move.

The ousting of President Fernando Lugo triggered domestic outrage as well as criticism from Paraguay’s neighbors. Latin American free trade groups Mercosur and Unasur have suspended the country’s membership, increasing its international isolation.

From democracy to ‘democraship’

Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar believes impeachment was orchestrated from outside Paraguay for economic interests. In an interview with RT, he listed those who, in his opinion, benefited most from Lugo’s removal.

“First of all, [those are] international agribusiness, like Monsanto and Cargill, because they are devastating enormous tracts of land in Paraguay for [its] agribusiness to be sold to the international market,” he told RT.

Other “beneficiaries” include Brazilian land owners, Escobar continued, who “own a lot of land in Paraguay,” local“comprador elites” who are sufficiently represented in the country’s parliament and control the media, and also the United States. The latter is attempting to “torpedo” any push towards integration in South America.

Woman Receives Anonymous Threats after Opposing Monsanto

Natural Society
Michael Barrett

After losing a 3-day old daughter to kidney failure, a woman named Sofia Gatica from Argentina made a decision to spearhead an anti-Monsanto movement with other mothers of sick children. Monsanto is a biotechnology, agrochemical company which has been polluting the environment and human health with herbicides, pesticides, genetically modified foods, and other substances for decades. Numerous cases have been brought against Monsanto for biological damage and even death — such is the recent case in which farmers say the biotech giant’s creations spawned ‘devastating birth defects‘.

Near where Gatica lives, there are soybean fields covering the land where farmers spray loads of chemicals on the crops. The primary weed killer used on the fields is the one and only Roundup, the most popular herbicide used by farmers which contains the active ingredient glyphosate. Gatica didn’t initially connect the chemical exposure to her baby’s death until she noticed that many of her friends and neighbors were also experiencing health problems.

“I started seeing children with mouth covers, mothers with scarves wrapped around their heads to cover their baldness, due to chemotherapy…There are soybeans to the north, to the south, and to the east, and when they spray, they spray over the people because there’s no distance,” Gatica said to a Grist reporter.

In fact,  researchers found that people in her area had three to four agricultural chemicals in their blood, including one chemical, endosulfan, which is banned in over 80 countries. The researchers also found that 33 percent of the residents were struck with cancer. In other previous German findings, Monsanto’s Roundup was present in all urine samples tested at an amount of 5 to 20-fold the established limit for drinking water, showing how prevalent these chemicals really are.

In retaliation to Monsanto and their highly used chemical creations, Gatica worked to create an international movement against Monsanto with other activists. A few years ago, after co-founding a group called Mothers of Ituzaingó, she and her group initiated the first epidemiological study of the area which found high rates of neurological and respiratory disease, birth defects, infant mortality, and cancer rates more than 40 times the national average. She then continued to find researchers to study the links between pesticides, herbicides, and health problems, while engaging in protests voicing concerns over the issues.

Explosive: Monsanto ‘Knowingly Poisoned Workers’ Causing Devastating Birth Defects

Natural Society
Anthony Gucciardi

In a developing news piece just unleashed by a courthouse news wire, Monsanto is being brought to court by dozens of  Argentinean tobacco farmers who say that the biotech giant knowingly poisoned them with herbicides and pesticides and subsequently caused ”devastating birth defects” in their children. The farmers are now suing not only Monsanto on behalf of their children, but many big tobacco giants as well. The birth defects that the farmers say occurred as a result are many, and include cerebral palsy, down syndrome, psychomotor retardation, missing fingers, and blindness.

The farmers come from small family-owned farms in Misiones Province and sell their tobacco to many United States distributors. The family farmers say that major tobacco companies like the Philip Morris company asked them to use Monsanto’s herbicides and pesticides, assuring them that the products were safe. Through asserting that the toxic chemicals were safe, the farmers state in their claim that the tobacco companies ”wrongfully caused the parental and infant plaintiffs to be exposed to those chemicals and substances which they both knew, or should have known, would cause the infant offspring of the parental plaintiffs to be born with devastating birth defects.”

The majority of the farmers in the area used Monsanto’s Roundup, an herbicide with the active ingredient glyphosate that has shown to be killing human kidney cells. What’s more, the farmers say that the tobacco companies pushed Monsanto’s Roundup on the farmers despite a lack of protective equipment. In other words, these farmers — many in dire economic conditions — were being directly exposed to Roundup in large concentrations without any protective gear (or even experience or skills in handling the substance). Still, the farmers say the tobacco giants required the struggling farmers to ‘purchase excessive quantities of Roundup and other pesticides’.

Most shocking, the farmers were ordered to discard leftover herbicides and pesticides in locations in which they leached directly into the water supply. With Monsanto’s Roundup already known to be contaminating the groundwater, this comes as a serious threat to pure water supplies.

The farmers end their landmark case with an explanation as to why the tobacco companies allowed Monsanto’s herbicides and pesticides to be unloaded on the small family farms in such vast quantities and purchased in excessive amounts. In their claim, the farmers state that the tobacco companies were ”motivated by a desire for unwarranted economic gain and profit,” with zero regard for the farmers and their infant children — many of which are now suffering from severe birth defects from Monsanto’s products.

World Bank Nominee Tied to Monsanto Shareholder Bill Gates, Soros

Natural Society
Tim McCoy

Obama nominated Dartmouth University president Jim Yong Kim, M.D. to head the United Nations World Bank.  Most people think that UN agencies benefit poor people, but this is far from the truth.

The UN World Bank claims to fight poverty in developing nations by financing infrastructure projects. But the UN World Bank is really a tool used to acquire Third World natural resources through conditions on loans that are extremely difficult to repay. The raw resources are then privatized by insider multi-national corporations.  The World Bank actually creates more poverty.

The nomination of Jim Yong Kim indicates that the World Bank may shift away from focusing on infrastructure and will instead turn toward providing health care in Third World countries.  Jim Yong Kim’s areas of interest include vaccines for tuberculosis as well as drugs for HIV and AIDS.

Kim brokered a deal with Big Pharma and the UN World Health Organization for expanding the pharmaceutical drug market to a larger populace in exchange for lower drug prices for second-line tuberculosis drugs.  Second-line drugs are used when basic treatment fails because of drug resistance.  Drug resistance similar to the new ‘resistant White Plague‘ brought about by big pharma’s drugs. Many in the medical community believed it would be dangerous to distribute second-line drugs widely.  Kim is also responsible for pushing HIV/AIDS retroviral drugs in developing nations.

HIV/AIDS drugs used in the Third World have profound side effects that include eye, kidney, liver and heart problems.

Jim Yong Kim says that the highest point in his career was when George Soros donated to Kim’s tuberculosis vaccine program, which was followed by a a huge grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for $44.7 million.  Monsanto shareholder Bill Gates, who has repeatedly stated that Monsanto’s GMOs are the answer to starvation despite scientific proof of the contrary, gave a controversial speech at a Ted conference outlining the controversial population reduction plan through ‘healthcare’:

“The world today has 6.8 billion people… that’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”

Additionally, Kim is the co-founder of Partners in Health along with Paul Farmer who is famous for saying that healthcare is a right.  Healthcare as a “right” disables health freedom to escape the medical health paradigm and choose your own methods of healing.  In addition, it also enables the government to determine whether or not an individual may receive care — the ‘right’ to live or die.  Therefore, this shocking and disturbing program falls into the category of a eugenics-based plan.

Conclusion:

The objective of Jim Yong Kim heading the UN World Bank appears to be to promote ludicrous policies by expanding healthcare through dangerous drugs.  Kim’s support for redistribution of wealth and socialized medicine may come with a tremendous price tag for developed countries (especially the US).  If the UN World Bank was truly a benevolent organization, the focus for the Third World would be on support for independent farming, clean water and food.

White House refuses to reveal ties with Monsanto

Russia Today

Volunteer reapers ("Faucheurs volontaires"), beekeepers
and anti-GMO activists put a placard in front of the
Regional Direction of Agriculture on
February 21, 2012 in Toulouse

Despite requests made under the Freedom of Information Act for correspondence out of the White House, the Obama administration is refusing to comply with calls to disclose discussions with Monsanto-linked lobbyists.

The US-based non-profit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is demanding that the White House comply with a FOIA request for information that might link the Obama administration with lobbyists tied to the Monsanto corporation. Monsanto, an agricultural biotech company that rakes in billions each year, has become the enemy of independent farmers in recent years after the corporation has sued hundreds of small-time growers and, in many cases, purchased farms that are unable to compete in a court of law. As Monsanto’s profits grow and the group comes close to monopolizing the market for American agriculture, the company has at the same time thrived due its use of controversial genetically-engineered seeds.

Three-hundred thousands organic farmers across America are currently trying to take Monsanto to court to keep the corporation from continuing its war on independent growers. As a case is composed, the PEER group suspects that the White House’s refusal to comply with the FOIA request could be because Monsanto has some powerful friends on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Particularly, PEER is trying to pry correspondence that came into the inbox of a White House policy analyst from a lobbyist with the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), which represents Monsanto and other manufacturers of genetically-engineered seeds. The White House says that disclosing the full details of the email could give competing companies an advantage as lobbying secrets are unearthed for the world, but PEER thinks the truth is much worse than that.

"We suspect the reason an industry lobbyist so cavalierly shared strategy is that the White House is part of that strategy," PEER staff counsel Kathryn Douglass tells the Truthout website. "The White House's legal posture is as credible as claiming Coca Cola's secret formula was 'inadvertently' left in a duffel bag at the bus station."

Michael Taylor, a former attorney for the US Department of Agriculture and lobbyist for Monsanto, was recently appointed to a federal role as the deputy commissioner for foods at the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Since then, the FDA shot down requests from consumer protection groups to label genetically modified products as such. With a White House-Monsanto connection already established with the appointment of Taylor, PEER and others are interested in what other ties could exist between the two.

The inquiry from PEER stems from an earlier email obtained in which biotech lobbyist Adrianne Massey confronts a White House official with regards to if and how the administration is dealing with a lawsuit PEER had filed. In that instance, PEER had fought and won to keep genetically-engineered crops from being planted in wildlife refuges. PEER is now suing the White House for the rest of that correspondence and other related emails.

Machines of War: Blackwater, Monsanto, and Bill Gates

Pravda
Silvia Ribeiro
La Jornada

A report by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation (Blackwater's Black Ops, 9/15/2010) revealed that the largest mercenary army in the world, Blackwater (now called Xe Services) clandestine intelligence services was sold to the multinational Monsanto. Blackwater was renamed in 2009 after becoming famous in the world with numerous reports of abuses in Iraq, including massacres of civilians. It remains the largest private contractor of the U.S. Department of State "security services," that practices state terrorism by giving the government the opportunity to deny it.

Many military and former CIA officers work for Blackwater or related companies created to divert attention from their bad reputation and make more profit selling their nefarious services-ranging from information and intelligence to infiltration, political lobbying and paramilitary training - for other governments, banks and multinational corporations. According to Scahill, business with multinationals, like Monsanto, Chevron, and financial giants such as Barclays and Deutsche Bank, are channeled through two companies owned by Erik Prince, owner of Blackwater: Total Intelligence Solutions and Terrorism Research Center. These officers and directors share Blackwater.

One of them, Cofer Black, known for his brutality as one of the directors of the CIA, was the one who made contact with Monsanto in 2008 as director of Total Intelligence, entering into the contract with the company to spy on and infiltrate organizations of animal rights activists, anti-GM and other dirty activities of the biotech giant.

Contacted by Scahill, the Monsanto executive Kevin Wilson declined to comment, but later confirmed to The Nation that they had hired Total Intelligence in 2008 and 2009, according to Monsanto only to keep track of "public disclosure" of its opponents. He also said that Total Intelligence was a  "totally separate entity from Blackwater."

However, Scahill has copies of emails from Cofer Black after the meeting with Wilson for Monsanto, where he explains to other former CIA agents, using their Blackwater e-mails, that the discussion with Wilson was that Total Intelligence had become "Monsanto's intelligence arm," spying on activists and other actions, including "our people to legally integrate these groups." Total Intelligence Monsanto paid $ 127,000 in 2008 and $ 105,000 in 2009.

No wonder that a company engaged in the "science of death" as Monsanto, which has been dedicated from the outset to produce toxic poisons spilling from Agent Orange to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), pesticides, hormones and genetically modified seeds, is associated with another company of thugs.

Almost simultaneously with the publication of this article in The Nation, the Via Campesina reported the purchase of 500,000 shares of Monsanto, for more than $23 million by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which with this action completed the outing of the mask of "philanthropy." Another association that is not surprising.

It is a marriage between the two most brutal monopolies in the history of industrialism: Bill Gates controls more than 90 percent of the market share of proprietary computing and Monsanto about 90 percent of the global transgenic seed market and most global commercial seed. There does not exist in any other industrial sector monopolies so vast, whose very existence is a negation of the vaunted principle of "market competition" of capitalism. Both Gates and Monsanto are very aggressive in defending their ill-gotten monopolies.

Although Bill Gates might try to say that the Foundation is not linked to his business, all it proves is the opposite: most of their donations end up favoring the commercial investments of the tycoon, not really "donating" anything, but instead of paying taxes to the state coffers, he invests his profits in where it is favorable to him economically, including propaganda from their supposed good intentions. On the contrary, their "donations" finance projects as destructive as geoengineering or replacement of natural community medicines for high-tech patented medicines in the poorest areas of the world. What a coincidence, former Secretary of Health Julio Frenk and Ernesto Zedillo are advisers of the Foundation.

Like Monsanto, Gates is also engaged in trying to destroy rural farming worldwide, mainly through the "Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa" (AGRA). It works as a Trojan horse to deprive poor African farmers of their traditional seeds, replacing them with the seeds of their companies first, finally by genetically modified (GM). To this end, the Foundation hired Robert Horsch in 2006, the director of Monsanto. Now Gates, airing major profits, went straight to the source.

Blackwater, Monsanto and Gates are three sides of the same figure: the war machine on the planet and most people who inhabit it, are peasants, indigenous communities, people who want to share information and knowledge or any other who does not want to be in the aegis of profit and the destructiveness of capitalism.

* The author is a researcher at ETC Group

Endgame Legislation: Lame Duck Session Ushers in Tyranny

Activist Post

When most of us think about "lame duck" Congressional sessions we think of a "do-nothing" government. However, this so-called lame duck session appears to be a time where legislation that has the most restrictions to individual rights is being rammed through.

It seems the members of government who have been recently voted out of office are vying for corporate jobs by pushing such legislation as the Food Safety Modernization Act and the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act which are now on the fast track to becoming law. Both of these laws reek of tyranny for the citizens and a means of corporate consolidation for the big boys.

It seems whenever a piece of legislation has the word "safety" in it we can expect to lose our right to make our own decisions.  For example, consumer protection groups pushed hard for the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act in 2008 after large numbers of Chinese-made toys and other products proved to have dangerously unhealthy toxins. 

Consequently, the bill was passed with 407 Ayes, 0 Nays in the House. Only later did the public find out that the bill did more to regulate, tax, and impose fines on neighborhood garage sales than it did to stop dangerous Chinese imports.  Clearly, the bill is used to clamp down on an individual's right to sell their used items without governmental oversight.  In other words, the corporate-government will not allow any form of black market to threaten their cartel control of consumerism.

The Food Safety Modernization Act has the backing of establishment liberals who think more big government regulation will protect us from food-borne diseases derived from factory farming.  Their heart seems to be in the right place, but placing trust in this horribly corrupt government to "protect" us makes them utterly gullible. The vote of 74-25 in the Senate proves the bill was more broadly supported than just with progressives, indicating strong corporate support from the Big-Agri lobby that wrote the bill. According to Darrell Castle of the Constitution Party, the bill purports to:

Preclude the public’s right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes.

It will more than likely make Michael Taylor (former Monsanto executive) the Food Czar.

End U.S. sovereignty over its own food supply by forcing compliance with WTO guidelines.

Even direct sales of food between individuals could be defined as smuggling under the language of the bill.

Codex Alimentarius, a global system of control over food and food supplements, would control all U.S. food and supplements. Access to natural food supplements would be removed under Codex rules.

Control of all seeds would transfer to Monsanto and other global multinationals.

The National Animal Identification System ( NAIS ) would be enacted, forcing bio-chipping and other identification and tracking methods for all animals, whether food or pets.

What is left of the American food system would be transferred into total control of Multinational Corporations under the guise of global governance.

Despite the draconian intentions of the bill, many respected alternative agriculture experts like Michael Pollan and Grist have given their lukewarm blessing to the bill as "as step in the right direction."  Controversial bills typically have enough seemingly logical solutions that become the focus of selling new regulations.  This bill is no different, as it gives the appearance of cracking down on large factory farms, exempting small family farms, creating better tracing methods for the origin of food-borne diseases, and certainly injects more financial resources into government agencies tasked with regulating food.  All of these were sold to the public amidst the fear of massive egg and meat recalls because of E. coli and Salmonella contamination.

We should know by now that nearly all legislation is not written or read by our elected officials, but rather by heavy-handed corporate interests who seek nothing less than total domination over their industries.  Yet, the public is still easily swayed.

The second piece of legislation that was flushed out of the Judiciary Committee last week with a 19-0 vote is the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA).  This bill is pure tyranny against Internet freedom.  In other words, they're not even using the guise of protecting the people to hammer this one home.  This bill seeks to arbitrarily create an Internet "Blacklist" of domains, much like the arbitrary "Terror Watch List."  The government is seeking the power to shut access to sites it flags . . . no judge, no evidence, no jury. The law will also apply to websites hosted outside the U.S. where the corporate-government will claim global control over information on the Internet.  The government plans to enforce the blocking of these Blacklisted websites by using major Internet service providers (ISPs).

To demonstrate how draconian this bill is, Copyright Laws are already very clear where if a media corporation can demonstrate that a given website used their material against Fair Use rights, they can be sued individually for damages.  This new law will bypass the current legal system of innocent until proven guilty with no warnings, presentation of evidence of wrong-doing, or determination of fault by a jury of peers.  Although the legislation is said to be focused on sharing movies, music, and television shows; the copyright violations are defined very broadly and will surely extend to any usage of Associated Press or Reuters stories (or the like) and/or images.

This broad definition will essentially put all alternative news websites in violation despite their Fair Use rights. In fact, nearly every article or commentary about world events that is covered by independent news organizations that quote or link to mainstream media stories as a reference may be in violation (including this article you're reading).  The COICA will effectively crush any opposition to the mainstream media's domination on the currently free and open world wide web.  If properly debated and dissected there is no way this bill would be passed, hence the rushing to pass it under a quiet Congressional session.

Both of these bills will likely become laws given their overwhelming support in Congress.  When enacted, the corporate-government tyranny will begin to work stealthily to regulate their competition out of the marketplace.  By the time the vast majority of people realize this tyranny, it will be too late to complain as the independent voices will assuredly be Blacklisted from any debate.

Biotech crops cause big jump in pesticide use: report

KANSAS CITY (Reuters) - The rapid adoption by U.S. farmers of genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton has promoted increased use of pesticides, an epidemic of herbicide-resistant weeds and more chemical residues in foods, according to a report issued Tuesday by health and environmental protection groups.

The groups said research showed that herbicide use grew by 383 million pounds from 1996 to 2008, with 46 percent of the total increase occurring in 2007 and 2008.

The report was released by nonprofits The Organic Center (TOC), the Union for Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the Center for Food Safety (CFS). Full Article

AP INVESTIGATION: Monsanto seed biz role revealed

ST. LOUIS — Confidential contracts detailing Monsanto Co.'s business practices reveal how the world's biggest seed developer is squeezing competitors, controlling smaller seed companies and protecting its dominance over the multibillion-dollar market for genetically altered crops, an Associated Press investigation has found. Full Article