Re: Sex, Lies and Monsanto

[Mordae]

That's certainly what it looks like   

there is a film being crowd-funded for called A New Resistance

Glyphosate. It is the key ingredient in "Roundup," a broad-spectrum weed killer developed by Monsanto. It has become the number one selling herbicide worldwide, due to the increase in the planting of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Crops, which are genetically engineered to withstand multiple applications of the weed killer during the growth cycle. It is also used in residential gardens and neighborhood parks around the world. For 20 + years Monsanto has claimed that this proprietary weed killer is safe.

But a host of recent studies have linked Roundup and glyphosate to an alarming number of diseases threatening animal and human health; including obesity, infertility, cancer, celiac disease, gluten intolerance, irritable bowel syndrome, autism and Alzheimer’s Disease. Also, we now understand that it is inside our bodies. More importantly, it is entering the bodies of our newborn children through breast milk.

In July 2013, despite countless letters and documents submitted in protest, the Environmental Protection Agency raised the maximum allowable residues of glyphosate in our food (most likely to accommodate the levels already routinely detected) - up to 30 times higher. Now officials are attempting to raise the allowable chemical residue of glyphosate in many important food crops that we eat everyday, including vegetables such as carrots, sweet potatoes, flax and sunflower seeds. The current allowable levels are already many times higher than has been shown to destroy the gut bacteria of chickens… so what is it doing to us?

It is time to investigate glyphosate’s impact on human health and the environment. It's time to stop raising the residue limits for a chemical that has potentially harmful effects on our health. It's time to stop the use of glyphosate altogether, unless and until peer-reviewed independent studies of glyphosate prove its use to be unquestionably safe.

[Rockhopper]

Nasty shit Glyphosate! It's all part of our modern mono-culture society now.

Since I have been buying organic wheat and grinding my own flour, I have had no prob. with gluten intolerance!

Tim

[Lenzabi]

That's certainly what it looks like   

there is a film being crowd-funded for called A New Resistance

Glyphosate. It is the key ingredient in "Roundup," a broad-spectrum weed killer developed by Monsanto. It has become the number one selling herbicide worldwide, due to the increase in the planting of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Crops, which are genetically engineered to withstand multiple applications of the weed killer during the growth cycle. It is also used in residential gardens and neighborhood parks around the world. For 20 + years Monsanto has claimed that this proprietary weed killer is safe.

But a host of recent studies have linked Roundup and glyphosate to an alarming number of diseases threatening animal and human health; including obesity, infertility, cancer, celiac disease, gluten intolerance, irritable bowel syndrome, autism and Alzheimer’s Disease. Also, we now understand that it is inside our bodies. More importantly, it is entering the bodies of our newborn children through breast milk.

In July 2013, despite countless letters and documents submitted in protest, the Environmental Protection Agency raised the maximum allowable residues of glyphosate in our food (most likely to accommodate the levels already routinely detected) - up to 30 times higher. Now officials are attempting to raise the allowable chemical residue of glyphosate in many important food crops that we eat everyday, including vegetables such as carrots, sweet potatoes, flax and sunflower seeds. The current allowable levels are already many times higher than has been shown to destroy the gut bacteria of chickens… so what is it doing to us?

It is time to investigate glyphosate’s impact on human health and the environment. It's time to stop raising the residue limits for a chemical that has potentially harmful effects on our health. It's time to stop the use of glyphosate altogether, unless and until peer-reviewed independent studies of glyphosate prove its use to be unquestionably safe.

And as the issues with Glyphosphate become exposed (Later than it should have been), they desire to make new crops with Dows 2-4-D or is it 2-D-4? basically a new version of Agent Orange, to deal with the crop weeds issues, the crops would have the higher impact of that chemical in soil already laced with Roundup here, and polluting Europe and other countries as well for their insane profits!
Why not actually make crops that are genetically able to choke out the weeds>? or resist drought as promised? or the high yields they promised but did not deliver on? Nah, they merely wanted to make it resist their poisons, and then they saw failure with their proprietary terminator seeds which do not grow with just a bit of water, it needed some other chemicalized hormone in the water to do it. Monsanto has proven itself irresponsible with food supplies as will others in Big Agro/Bio-chems

[Mordae]

Dows 2-4-D or is it 2-D-4

Probably 2D4, it looks much as you'd imagine someone writing DDT   

Why not actually make crops that are genetically able to choke out the weeds>? or resist drought as promised? or the high yields they promised but did not deliver on? Nah, they merely wanted to make it resist their poisons, and then they saw failure with their proprietary terminator seeds which do not grow with just a bit of water, it needed some other chemicalized hormone in the water to do it. Monsanto has proven itself irresponsible with food supplies as will others in Big Agro/Bio-chems

It's probably a mistaken belief that there is not enough profit in natural systems.

And yes...very irresponsible   

[Lenzabi]

If they use that chemical spray, the crops will look like they are being grown on the moon!   

Oh yes, irresponsible push for their own pockets lined with profits from their fraud.

Claim: higher yields. reality: some crops have even shown lower yields than natural ones. the rest just the same yields.

Claim: Their crops would need less water. Reality: Their crops need the exact same amount as non GMO crops.

Claim: Safer for the environment. reality: No, not really, they have their crops that have made stronger fungal threats and insect threats while being toxic to butterflies and other pollinator species.

I get that from the natural food movement sites which are trying to get us back to organic farming and away from Big Agro-Chems and factory farming.

[Mordae]

Interesting article that goes into Monsanto's activities in India, as well as some of the PR activities that are now in play.

Seeds of Truth – Vandana Shiva Responds to The New Yorker

Editor’s Note: The New Yorker carried an article in its 25 August 2014 issue “Seeds of Doubt” by journalist Michael Specter, dedicated ostensibly to Vandana Shiva and the anti-GMO campaign, but is in truth a none-too-subtle ploy to discredit both in the service of the biotech industry. Specter had already published a book in 2009, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, purporting to defend science from its critics in denial of scientific progress (see a review of the book here: http://grist.org/article/2009-10-31-michael-specter-denialism-organic-gmo). This is her reply...


...For the record, ever since I sued Monsanto in 1999 for its illegal Bt cotton trials in India, I have received death threats, my websites have been hacked and turned into porn sites, the chairman of a girls’ college founded by my grandfather, has been harassed. Actions have been taken to impede Navdanya’s work by attempting to bribe my colleagues to leave – and they have failed. None of these systemic attacks over the last two decades have deterred me from doing my research and activism with responsibility, integrity, and compassion. The concerted PR assault on me for the last two years from Lynas, Specter and an equally vocal Twitter group is a sign that the global outrage against the control over our seed and food, by Monsanto through GMOs, is making the biotech industry panic.

Character assassination has always been a tool used by those who cannot successfully defend their message. Although they think such slander will destroy my career, they don’t understand that I consciously gave up a ‘career’ in 1982 for a life of service. The spirit of service inspired by the truth, conscience and compassion cannot be stopped by threats or media attacks. For me, science has always been about service, not servitude.

My life of science is about creativity and seeing connections, not about mechanistic thought and manipulated facts.

[Lenzabi]

My life of science is about creativity and seeing connections, not about mechanistic thought and manipulated facts.

Monsanto, the people who only conduct quickie tests, no long term effects on environment, animals or human organ testing as they did in Europe, which showed that Monsanto is as unhealthy as hell!

They dare to discredit her and others as they seek the profits from crops that only survive their chem-sprays.

Other promises not fulfilled so they lie and cheat amongst other things.

[Mordae]

A personal witness to the devastating demise of wild pollinators and other species as glyphosate herbicides increase in the environment:

How Roundup® Poisoned My Nature Reserve

In March 2006, UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) announced the closure of its wildlife research centres [1], a decision opposed by 99% of 1 327 stakeholders. Monks Wood centre, which hosted BBC’s Spring Watch, pioneered work on DDT and pesticides in the 1960s, and more recently revealed how climate change is affecting wildlife, with spring arriving three weeks earlier. The research centres were also involved in assessing the impacts of GM (genetically modified) crops on wildlife, with findings contradicting industry claims that no harm would be caused.

In response to that and to the unexplained disappearance of birds and invertebrates (such as bumblebees, honeybees and other pollinators), we set aside one acre of the field next to our house in South Wales to make a chemical-free nature reserve...

<<<BREAK>>>


...Biodiversity started to decrease rapidly in 2013. What was the cause?

By 2013 we knew that something was wrong. The numbers and species of invertebrates in our reserve were declining. Their behaviour was abnormal. In August, some of their food plants were uniformly affected with mildew.

In 2006, we had commissioned an overnight moth count [4] from a professional naturalist. The next morning at about 6 am when he emptied the traps, he recorded (while we photographed) 143 species of moths, attracted to the bright lights from a wide radius. Some species trapped were in numbers up to 500. We were astounded by the variety of species and asked if it was to do with the sunflowers which we had grown in the field as a winter crop for birds. No, he replied, it was because we weren’t using pesticides and we had allowed the small wildflowers to flourish.

In 2013 we asked him to repeat the count. He confirmed our worse fears, the biodiversity had declined. He counted only 51 species and the maximum number of the same species was 50. By August 2014, a naturalist friend with a reserve 3 miles away had stopped doing moth counts. He said there were so few that it wasn’t worth the effort.

In April 2013, we were sent a scientific paper by Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff, which showed that glyphosate’s suppression of Cytochrome P450 enzymes and amino acid biosynthesis by beneficial gut microbes has led to a variety of human diseases that globally reach epidemic proportions in populations on a Western diet, including gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease [5]....

The article also goes on to measure the amount of Glyphosate in local rivers and tapwater, the decrease in invertibrate life, the impact of health etc al. Quite a sobering read.