Sex, Lies and Monsanto

[Mordae]

Back in my late teens (a couple of decades ago now), I used to play the “Shadowrun” RPG, a cyberpunk genre game where mega-corporations ran the world, dictating to the governments how they would rule.

Now I look at Monsanto, seeing the same game played, but more blatantly, and without fear of being exposed in it’s mechanisms. (Not sure if this makes it a conspiracy or just that the fluoride is doing its job correctly).  

Although there has now been two global “March against Monsanto” activities in May, there doesn’t appear to have been any journalistic investigations into any of the questions that it may have raised (at least that I have seen), if anything; several of the news articles I’ve read seem to be bemused that such a generous corporation is so despised.

None so far have asked about:

Donations (re pay-offs) to at least 71 men and women in Congress

The post-employment density of former Monsanto employees in the Obama Administration (and earlier Administrations) and other Government departments.

Scientific evidence that GM modified corn causes liver cancer in lab rats

Why a Supreme Court Judge that was a former Monsanto employee didn’t think it a relevant reason to sequester himself from a trial against Monsanto (No surprises who won that case really).

Why Monsanto feel it necessary to hire “Xu” (or "Greystone" etc al) formerly known as Blackwater to provide security to their sites.

Why Monsanto are so desperate to avoid having to put product labeling on their products.

Why the only person doing research on the effects of Roundup on bee colonies had his test hive confiscated by the state and destroyed before the trial (pretty sure that destroying states evidence is a felony, regardless of weather or not the state does it)

Why the fact that the satuation level of Roundup is now so high that traces are now found in rain water in the US

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

[Rockhopper]

All round fine fellows Mordman!   

Tim.

[Mordae]

Ain't they just.   

Then again, you don't get voted "Worlds most evil corporation" for that many years straight just because you nicked some girl guide bikkies.

[Rockhopper]

Control food-control people!

Tim.

[Agartha]

The whole world is ruled by a few families that own it all......who owns Monsanto? I don't know whom, but what I know is that Monsanto owns sooo many brands, including Kellogs, Campbell, Carnation, Hellmans, Pepsi......you name it!

No other company has had more protests in the history of......ever! at the end of May 2013, 2 million protesters in more than 50 countries asked for Monsanto to be shut down.....but Monsanto is untouchable.

[Mordae]

Here you go Ag's, some light reading material for you ...

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/company-profiles/monsanto-who-where-how-much

Monsanto are 85% owned by Pharmacia (a merger between Pharmacia/Upjohn and Monsanto). In the UK Monsanto are represented by four companies, Monsanto UK Limited, Monsanto PLC, Monsanto UK Services Company and Monsanto UK Holding Company

Board Of Directors [10]


Chairman of the Board Frank V. AtLee III (60)

Retired president of American Cyanamid Company and former president of Cyanamid International.

President and Chief Executive Officer Hendrik A. Verfaillie (55)

Involved with the old pre merger Monsanto Company since 1976. Director of the old Monsanto since 1999.

Director Hakan Astrom (53)

Senior vice president, strategy and corporate affairs of Pharmacia Corporation.

Director Christopher J. Coughlin (48)

Executive vice president and chief financial officer of Pharmacia Corporation. Formerly president of Nabisco International.

Director Michael (Mickey) Kantor (61)

Formerly US secretary of commerce (1996-1997) and US trade representative (1993-1996). National Chairman for the Clinton/Gore presidential campaign (1992). Currently a partner in international law firm Mayer, Brown Platt and Kantor. Also a director of Pharmacia International.

Director Gwendolyn S. King (60)

President of Podium Prose, speaker’s bureau and speechwriting service. Formerly senior vice president of PECO Energy Company (1992-1998), Commissioner Social Security Administration (1989-1992). Director of Lockheed Martin Corporation and Marsh and McLennan Companies Inc.

Director C. Steven McMillan (55)

President and chief executive officer of Sara Lee Corporation (packaged goods company, brands include Sara Lee, Douwe Egberts, Hillshire Farm, Hanes and Playtex). Formerly president, chief operating officer and executive vice president Sara Lee Corporation (1997-2000). Director Sara Lee Corporation, Pharmacia Corporation and Dynegy Inc.

Director William Parfet (54)

Chairman and chief executive officer of MPI Research Inc (preclinical toxicology and clinical pharmaceutical testing laboratory. Formerly president and chief executive officer of Richard Allan Medical Industries (1993-1996). Also a director of Pharmacia Corporation, CMS Energy Corporation, Stryker Corporation and Sybron International.

Director John S. Reed (62)

Retired chairman of Citigroup Inc (commercial bank and financial services company) (1998-2000). Chairman and chief executive officer Citicorp and Citibank (1984-1998). Also a director of Philip Morris Companies Inc, and a Member of The Business Council.

This link gives a fairly good summary of the Monsanto's activities over the last couple of years...and raises a couple of questions about it's sudden love affair with DuPont, who have gone from suing each other to sharing biotech information in the space of a year  
http://grist.org/food/monsanto-flirts-with-disaster-owns-the-world-anyway/

This is a link to the full length version of the Documentry "The World According to Monsanto"
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-world-according-to-monsanto/

There’s nothing they are leaving untouched: the mustard, the okra, the bringe oil, the rice, the cauliflower. Once they have established the norm: that seed can be owned as their property, royalties can be collected. We will depend on them for every seed we grow of every crop we grow. If they control seed, they control food, they know it – it’s strategic. It’s more powerful than bombs. It’s more powerful than guns. This is the best way to control the populations of the world. The story starts in the White House, where Monsanto often got its way by exerting disproportionate influence over policymakers via the “revolving door”. One example is Michael Taylor, who worked for Monsanto as an attorney before being appointed as deputy commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1991. While at the FDA, the authority that deals with all US food approvals, Taylor made crucial decisions that led to the approval of GE foods and crops. Then he returned to Monsanto, becoming the company’s vice president for public policy.
Thanks to these intimate links between Monsanto and government agencies, the US adopted GE foods and crops without proper testing, without consumer labeling and in spite of serious questions hanging over their safety. Not coincidentally, Monsanto supplies 90 percent of the GE seeds used by the US market. Monsanto’s long arm stretched so far that, in the early nineties, the US Food and Drugs Agency even ignored warnings of their own scientists, who were cautioning that GE crops could cause negative health effects. Other tactics the company uses to stifle concerns about their products include misleading advertising, bribery and concealing scientific evidence.

A fairly old site, but with a great deal of information on Monsanto from the Nineties:
http://members.aye.net/~hippie/monsan2.htm

Time article on the bloke who runs Monsanto:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760723,00.html

What I'm finding interesting atm is the frequency in which articles like this are showing up...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-187832/EU-countries-banned-GM-free.html#ixzz2Ur3EHeEq

Nations and regions which want to stay free of genetically-modified crops will be banned from doing so under a devastating ruling by EU scientists.
The decision, the first from the new European Food Safety Authority, means governments will be unable to stop the controversial plants being grown on their soil - effectively opening the floodgates.

...especially when Monsanto declares it won't be spending any more money to advertise it's seeds in the EU a couple of weeks beforehand, after losing a court case in France.

It's anyones guess as to whether or not the deciding factor was the anti-biotic resistant E. Coli outbreak in Europe a couple of years ago, that was "traced" back to organic seeds grown in England. Thing is, the easiest way to genetically enginner new traits in a plant is to modify a virus/bacteria (which is usually E. Coli, as they are designed to penetrate a cell) and to keep track of varients, they add an anti-biotic resistance (a genetic "marker'). If GM plants cross-pollinate, there is a very good chance you can end up with plants that carry multiple anti-biotic resistances (especially if said plant is a major component of animal feed).

What's that, there's a sudden emergence of antibiotic resistant diseases throughout the developed world?    

The interaction between Monsanto and the US Government is fairly well-known, between other government's...not so much. However it also appears to tie in to some of the other conspiracies concerning Agenda 21, the Codex Alimentarius and probably a couple of others.

[Rockhopper]

Dandy Donny Rumsfeld was tied up in Monsanto as well.

E-Coli is modified to produce insulin for diabetics but it is in a very controlled laboratory environment. Once the modified seeds are out there they have lost control of them.

Tim.

[Agartha]

Here you go Ag's, some light reading material for you ...

    

OMG!!!!!!!!! hahahahaha

[Lenzabi]

Tes lots are all the EU has if anything , allowed to see GMO plants, so the outbreak of the resistant E.coli does show that Monsanto, Bayer, DuPont, and a few other bio-giants need do NO open lot testing or flushing of their test matter. The US is doomed, they have been saturating the plant life, the soil and water for decades with their frankenfoods and chemicals

[Mordae]

Yeah, what they hadn't anticipated is that the plants that were classed as weeds would develop a resistance to the chemicals, creating "superweeds".

http://farmindustrynews.com/ag-technology-solution-center/glyphosate-resistant-weed-problem-extends-more-species-more-farms

At the same time though, the chemicals have a detrimental effect on insects (especially bees) and marine life.

[Lenzabi]

Yeah, what they hadn't anticipated is that the plants that were classed as weeds would develop a resistance to the chemicals, creating "superweeds".

http://farmindustrynews.com/ag-technology-solution-center/glyphosate-resistant-weed-problem-extends-more-species-more-farms

At the same time though, the chemicals have a detrimental effect on insects (especially bees) and marine life.

Yes, these companies are worried about the profits from their herbicides and pesticides more than feeding people. These latest crop ideas and schemes from Dow and Monsanto need to be placed under independent, untouched by their money research to check for the actual long term issues that may arise from these new crops, and the chemicals they are made to stand up to.

Nature always finds a way around human plans.  

[Mordae]

Speaking of Monsanto's chemicals...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/monsanto-roundup-linked-to-global-boom-in-celiac-disease-and-gluten-intolerance/5370041

Celiac disease, gluten intolerance and irritable bowel syndrome are on the rise worldwide, and that rise has taken place in parallel with the increased use of glyphosate (Roundup) herbicide, shows a new US peer-reviewed paper from Dr. Anthony Samsel and Dr. Stephanie Seneff.

The review has been published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Toxicology.

“Celiac disease, and, more generally, gluten intolerance, is a growing problem worldwide, but especially in North America and Europe, where an estimated 5% of the population now suffers from it. Symptoms include nausea, diarrhea, skin rashes, macrocytic anemia and depression. It is a multifactorial disease associated with numerous nutritional deficiencies as well as reproductive issues and increased risk to thyroid disease, kidney failure and cancer.

Here, we propose that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide, Roundup®, is the most important causal factor in this epidemic.”...

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/24876-monsantos-herbicide-linked-to-fatal-kidney-disease-epidemic-will-ckdu-topple-monsanto

For years, scientists have been trying to unravel the mystery of a chronic kidney disease epidemic that has hit Central America, India and Sri Lanka. The disease occurs in poor peasant farmers who do hard physical work in hot climes. In each instance, the farmers have been exposed to herbicides and to heavy metals. The disease is known as CKDu, for Chronic Kidney Disease of unknown etiology. The “u” differentiates this illness from other chronic kidney diseases where the cause is known. Very few Western medical practitioners are even aware of CKDu, despite the terrible toll it has taken on poor farmers from El Salvador to South Asia...

...In an investigation worthy of the great Sherlock Holmes, a scientific sleuth from Sri Lanka, Dr. Channa Jayasumana, and his two colleagues, Dr. Sarath Gunatilake and Dr. Priyantha Senanayake, have put forward a unifying hypothesis that could explain the origin of the disease. They reasoned that the offending agent had to have been introduced into Sri Lanka within the last 30 years, since the first cases appeared in the mid-1990s. The chemical also needed to be able to form stable complexes with the metals in hard water and to act as a shield, protecting those metals from metabolism by the liver. The compound would also need to act as a carrier and be able to deliver the metals to the kidney.

We know that political changes in Sri Lanka in the late 1970s led to the introduction of agrochemicals, especially in rice farming. The researchers looked for likely suspects. Everything pointed to glyphosate. This herbicide is used in abundance in Sri Lanka. Earlier studies had shown that once glyphosate binds with metals, the glyphosate-metal complex can last for decades in the soil.

Glyphosate was not originally designed for use as an herbicide. Patented by the Stauffer Chemical Company in 1964, it was introduced as a chelating agent. It avidly binds to metals. Glyphosate was first used as a descaling agent to clean out mineral deposits from the pipes in boilers and other hot water systems.

It is this chelating property that allows glyphosate to form complexes with the arsenic, cadmium and other heavy metals found in the groundwater and soil in Central America, India and Sri Lanka. The glyphosate-heavy metal complex can enter the human body in a variety of ways. The complex can be ingested, inhaled or absorbed through the skin. Glyphosate acts like a Trojan horse, allowing the bound heavy metal to avoid detection by the liver, since the glyphosate occupies the binding sites that the liver would normally latch onto. The glyphosate-heavy metal complex reaches the kidney tubules, where the high acidity allows the metal to break free of the glyphosate. The cadmium or arsenic then damages the kidney tubules and other parts of the kidneys, ultimately resulting in kidney failure and, most often, death.

At this point, this elegant theory advanced by Dr. Jayasumana and colleagues can only be considered hypothesis-generating. Further scientific studies will need to confirm the hypothesis that CKDu is indeed due to glyphosate-heavy metal toxicity to the kidney tubules. For the present, this may be the best explanation for the epidemic...

[Agartha]

About ten years ago my paternal aunt started loosing weight, lots of it, until she was practically skin and bones. She was unable to eat, didn't have any energy and spent a couple of months in bed, unable to even get up to wash her face. She had so many tests done, all looking for some sort of cancer, but they were all coming back negative. Until the doctors finally thought to do a celiac test, which they had ruled out as she didn't have stomachache or loose bowel movements.......and that last test saved her life.

She is a celiac and since excluding all gluten from her diet she has not put on weight and she is back to her usual hyperactive self! lol

Celiac disease is on the rise and it could be the herbicide mentioned on that article, or maybe simply how our diets have changed? For the past 50 years we have been eating sooo much processed food which has to have an effect in the long term.

I personally think it's a combination of three factors: herbicides, diet and the infamous GMO wheat.......our grandparents ate a completely type of wheat than the ones we eat.....unfortunately for us.

[Rockhopper]

I collect seeds from the veges I grow and store them in the freezer. They stay viable for some years that way.

Let three plants flower and go to seed, then collect the seeds and store them. That way you get genetic variation.

Tim.

[Mordae]

I personally think it's a combination of three factors: herbicides, diet and the infamous GMO wheat.......our grandparents ate a completely type of wheat than the ones we eat.....unfortunately for us.

That's true, the nutritional value of wheat has plummeted over the last couple of decades, partly because exposure to nitrates inhibits the formation of the amino acid (thinl it's Lysine (sp) ) . These days the cardboard box you get your weetbix in has more nutritional value.

Good advice Tim

[Agartha]

....These days the cardboard box you get your weetbix in has more nutritional value.

^^ This sounds so sad, eh?  

[Mordae]

Yes it is   . Can't really blame Monsanto for that though, it's more a symptom of industrialized monoculture

[Mordae]

Another Silent Spring
Here’s our choice. We wait and see whether a class of powerful pesticides, made by Bayer and Syngenta, is indeed pushing entire ecosystems to oblivion, or we suspend their use while proper trials are conducted. The natural world versus two chemical companies: how hard can this be?

Papers published over the past few weeks suggest that neonicotinoids, pesticides implicated in killing or disabling bees, have similar effects on much of life on earth. On land and in water, these neurotoxins appear to be degrading entire foodchains. Licensed before sufficient tests were conducted, they are now the world’s most widely used pesticides. We are just beginning to understand what we’ve walked into.

A paper in Nature last week showed a strong correlation between neonicotinoid concentrations and the decline of birds such as swallows, skylarks, yellowhammers, wagtails, starlings and whitethroats(1). It couldn’t demonstrate causation, but it was elegantly designed to exclude competing factors. The precipitous loss of insects caused by this pesticide is the simplest and most obvious explanation, as all these birds depend on insects to feed their young. Where the chemical was heavily used, bird populations fell by 3.5% a year; where it was not, they held up. At this rate, it doesn’t take long to engineer a world without song.

Another paper reports that residues of neonicotinoids were found in all the soil samples the researchers took(2): these chemicals are highly persistant. Sold to farmers as precise and targeted, they are some of the least discriminate pesticides ever produced. When they are used to treat seeds, just 5% is absorbed by the plant: the rest soaks into the soil, with potentially lethal impacts on the animals that maintain its structure and fertility(3).

They are also water-soluble. Recent papers suggest a collapse in the diversity and abundance of invertebrates in water running off farms where neonicotinoids are used(4,5.6). Mayflies and caddisflies, essential to the survival of many aquatic ecosystems, are especially vulnerable(7).

Another new paper provides compelling evidence linking these chemicals to colony collapse disorder: the sudden disappearance of honeybees that’s now trashing the livelihoods of beekeepers in the US(. Half the colonies exposed to neonicotinoids disappeared in the course of one winter; none of the untreated swarms vanished.

Worldwide contamination, indiscriminately wiping out wild animals, including those on which farming depends: these are the findings of an analysis of 800 scientific papers, also just published(9). How much more obvious does the case for action need to be?

Sure, there is plenty that we don’t yet know. We know almost nothing about the long-term, cumulative effects of these chemicals, or about what neonicotinoids do to birds that eat contaminated seeds, to mammal and amphibian populations, to coral reefs or marine life of any kind(10). Governments went into it blind, approving neonicotinoids before they had even a fraction of the necessary knowledge...

[Mordae]

Why you should never let Monsanto write your risk assessment reports...especially for their products   

Scandal of Glyphosate Re-assessment in Europe

EU rapporteur state Germany recommends re-approval with daily intake increased by 67 %; its re-assessment was carried out by Monsanto and a consortium of chemical companies in Europe based almost entirely on studies from industry; it should be rejected outright.

Preposterous verdict of “acceptable” risks for glyphosate

Germany, acting as the European Union rapporteur member state (RMS) submitted their glyphosate renewal assessment report (RAR) to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in January 2014, recommending re-approval of glyphosate for use in Europe with increase in the acceptable daily intake (ADI) from 0.3 to 0.5 mg per kg body weight per day [1].


The overall findings of the RAR are that glyphosate poses no unacceptable risks. Glyphosate is not metabolized or accumulated in the body, not genotoxic, not carcinogenic, not endocrine disrupting, and not considered persistent or bioaccumulative; it has no reproductive toxicity, no toxic effects on hormone-producing or hormone-dependent organs, and no unacceptable effect on bees. Therefore any risks are within acceptable standards. The only risks noted were that glyphosate is a severe eye irritant and is persistent in soil.

Issues that could not be finalized in the assessment were: relevance of impurities, effects on microorganisms, effects on non-targeted plants, and indirect effects on biodiversity — non-targeted organisms, particularly birds.

The Proposed Decision at the end of Vol. 1 is completely blacked out...

[Lenzabi]

Based on that last post, Monsanto has found folks they were able to bribe and ensure their European market for roundup. Get ready to see the need pushed for their round-up ready crop seeds in Europe.