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Tuesday, November 18, 2014


THE GMO SCRAPBOOK: HAWAIIAN BAN OF GMOS, AND MON(STER)SANTO’S (PREDICTABLE) RESPONSE


The recent (s)election cycle wasn’t a complete wash for sanity, though it came very close to being so. After all, the only thing the American electorate managed to do was exchange donkey dung for elephant dung, blue dung for red dung. But one Hawaiian county, Maui, managed to pass an ordnance banning GMOs, and the predictable result has been that Mon(ster)santo, in its endless quest to deny citizens their right to self-governance, has brought suit against the state of Hawaii over the whole matter:
Two leading developers of genetically engineered corn have sued Maui County
The suit is a microcosm of what is wrong with the corrupt system, and why out-of-control GMO corporations like Mon(ster)santo and the bought-and-paid-for federal goobernment will never acknowledge the real problem and concerns of those seeking such moratoriums:
“The lawsuit said Monsanto would have to substantially downsize its activity in the county, where it employs over 365 people and owns or leases more than 3,000 acres of farmland on Molokai and Maui islands. Mycogen Seeds, a unit of Dow AgroSciences, would shut down critical parts of its development and production operations in the county, and downsize its work force, the complaint said. Mycogen Seeds employs over 100 people and farms about 420 acres on Molokai.
“Local businesses, seed company employees and the farm bureau joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs.
“‘This local referendum interferes with and conflicts with long-established state and federal laws that support both the safety and lawful cultivation of GMO plants,’ John Purcell, Monsanto Hawaii’s business and technology lead, said in a statement.
“The Maui law imposes a moratorium on the growing of genetically engineered crops until scientific studies are conducted on their safety and benefits. The moratorium would be lifted only after a vote by the Maui County Council.
“The law, which doesn’t apply to crops in mid-growth cycle, goes into effect when officials certify the election results. That’s expected to happen late this month.
“The case has been assigned to Magistrate Judge Barry Kurren, who earlier this year declared a Kauai County law regulating genetically modified crops was invalid because it was superseded by state law. The case is currently before a federal appeals court.
“The Maui initiative’s authors sued the county in state court Wednesday to ensure the county implements the law.
“Michael Carroll, their attorney, said they would request the federal court to hold off from deciding this case until the state court on Maui has ruled.”
Now, when one reads between the lines a bit, it is clear that what is really occurring is that if you’re a big shiny corporate peddler of junk, such as Duponzanto, Mon(ster)santo, or Syncrudda, then you have special status – almost a kind of “corporate nobility” – a privileged status protected at the federal level, a status gained by the ability to buy influence within federal agencies and to afford the protection of federal law; states and counties are largely helpless before this juggernaut. After all, corporate hydras like these companies could bankrupt most states, let alone counties, by such lawsuits, and have the power, through their purchased morally corrupt attorneys, to string along such legalities in a blizzard of paperwork.
And this highlights the problem: in modern Amerika, there is no rule of law; justice is a thing to be purchased, not deliberated upon or dispensed. There is a privileged class, and then there is the rest of us. And then there are the corrupt, bought, or blackmailed judges that “dispense” it.
There is another problem, one also evident in the above case: ultimately the GMO issue is not only an issue about increasingly evident “bad science” (for the corruption extends to the falsification, or suppression, of opposing scientific data, not only about the productivity of GMOs, but about their potential health and environmental hazards), it is about life itself. And thus the GMO giants are really, and at root, in fundamental opposition to one of the founding documents of this country: The Declaration of Independence…. you know, that whole “endowed- by-their-Creator-with-certain-unalienable-rights,-that-among-these-are-life,-liberty,-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness”-thing.  They do not want people to have the freedom to grow (and eat) what they will; they do want to control the world’s food supply, using the mechanism of patent law to do so.
And this means that ultimately, they are against life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This means that ultimately, and as a recent Princeton study has concluded, Amerika is not a republic at all. That may be what it is on paper, but in reality, it is a kind of combination of fascism(corporate socialism) and oligarchy. So maybe the real question is: who owns the major blocks of shares in these companies? That would probably tell quite a story, and why they are so against life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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