Major Monsanto Lawsuit Completely Blacked out by Media

By Christina Sarich

Global Research, May 25, 2015

Natural Society

Region: USA

Theme: Biotechnology and GMO, Law and Justice, Media Disinformation

What happens when one courageous attorney and a few citizens try to take down Monsanto? The MSM   "whores" doesn’t cover it, for starters.
Efforts to publicize a class action lawsuit against Monsanto for false advertising it’s best-selling herbicide Roundup filed in Los Angeles County Court on April 20, 2015 have been rejected by almost every mainstream media outlet.
It’s no different than Fox, NBC, CNN, or ABC refusing to cover the DARK ACT which would give Monsanto legal immunity and disallow states to demand GMO labeling.
You would think that coverage of something the whole world wants to see – the first step toward the successful downfall of Monsanto –would be a hot news item; a newsworthy tidbit that every paper, radio station, and blog would want to spread across their pages with double bold headlines. But wait. . . just six corporations own ALL of the media in America, so there isn’t much luck there.
That’s why you have to go to sites like Russia Insider or Al Jazeera to find real news outside of certain alternative news channels in the US, and even those are white-washed from Facebook pages, and given secondary ratings on Google pages.
Matthew Phillips, the attorney suing Monsanto in California for false advertising on Roundup bottles, has asked the LA Times, New York Times, Huffington Post, CNN, and Reuters, one of the world’s largest news agencies to report on the lawsuit (Case No: BC 578 942), and most enforced a total media blackout.
When I spoke with Phillips over the phone, he said that he has tried posting the suit in Wikipedia’s Monsanto litigation section, but it keeps ‘disappearing.’ He says that he has also noticed posts on Facebook about this lawsuit get removed.
Phillips points out that as long as Monsanto can keep this lawsuit off of most of America’s radar, then his client base would be relegated to just the citizens of California.
If other attorneys were to follow his template-style lawsuit, which he wrote in English, devoid of extraneous legal-speak to encourage others to also take action against Monsanto, then suddenly the plaintiff count could be closer to several million. That is if you were to tally up all the citizens in the US who have purchased a bottle of Roundup from their local DIY store (Lowe’s, Home Depot or Ace Hardware, for example) in the last four years, not suspecting it could demolish their gut health.
Another possibility, according to Phillips, is that Monsanto could try to bump the case up to federal court in order to try to side-step a likely adverse judgment. But in this case the class action suit would also be open to residents other than those of just California. This is surely an idea that Monsanto doesn’t want seeded in the American psyche.
Phillips is extremely confident he has the goods on Monsanto in this case, and barring a sold out judge:

“This is a slam-dunk lawsuit that exposes Monsanto for LYING about Roundup. Contrary to the label, Roundup does indeed target and kill enzymes found in humans — in our gut bacteria — and this explains America’s chronic indigestion!”

His enthusiasm is palpable, as many well-known scientists and professors emeritus have offered to be key witnesses in this suit when it goes to trial. The attorney says he refuses to ‘settle’ the case and hopes that 49 additional attorneys in 49 states use his case as an example. He joked:

“When we allege that Roundup’s targeted enzyme is found in humans, it’s like alleging that the Golden Gate Bridge is found in California.”

The facts of the case really are that obvious.
Phillips also states that ‘false advertising’ and ‘misleading’ are synonyms in California law, so the fact that Monsanto has stated that there are enzymes in its product that don’t target humans – well that’s beyond just misleading. This obvious misjudgment by Monsanto is a well-known secret among many anti-GM scientists. This enzyme is definitely found in humans.
Here is how ‘misleading’ Monsanto’s statement that, “Round Up targets an enzyme only found in plants and not in humans or animals,” truly is:
EPSP synthase, also known as (3-phosphoshikimate 1-carboxyvinyltransferase) is found in the microbiota that reside in our intestinal tracts, and therefore the enzyme is “found in humans and animals.” It is partly responsible for immunity activation and even helps our gut and our brains communicate with one another.
EPSP synthase is among other beneficial microbes that produce neurometabolites that are either neurotransmitters or modulators of neurotransmission.

“These could act directly on nerve terminals in the gut or via ‘transducer’ cells such as enterochromaffin cells present throughout the intestinal tract and are accessible to microbes and in contact with afferent and efferent nerve terminals. Some of these cells may also signal and therefore modulate immune cell activity.”

Furthermore, although this will not be addressed in Phillip’s lawsuit:

“There is increasing evidence that exposure to Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, may be an underlying cause of autism spectrum disorders (see [19]).  Glyphosate, the active ingredient, acts through inhibition of the 5-enolpyruvylshikimic acid-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS synthase) enzyme in the shikimate pathway that catalyses the production of aromatic amino acids. This pathway does not exist in animals, but it does exist in bacteria, including those that live in the gut and are now known to be as much a part of our body as our own cells. A widely accepted dogma is that glyphosate is safe due to the lack of the EPSPS enzyme in our body. This however does not hold water now that the importance of our microbiota to our physiology is clear.”

Though Monsanto is only being sued for false advertising in this case, it is an important precedent to set in order to eventually take down one of the biotech giants that is poisoning the planet. It should send a clear message to Dow, Bayer, Cargill, and Syngenta as well.
Please show the MSM that we will not be silenced, and pass this information along however you can. If you live in California, consider being a part of the suit yourself. If you are an attorney, Phillips is happy to discuss his suit with you in hopes that you will add your state to the growing list of those standing up to Big Ag and the biotech bullies.
Phillip’s has been invited to speak at the upcoming Los Angeles March against Monsanto. You can read more about his case, here.
The attorney’s final advice?
“Glyphosate kills – it’s made that way.”
* The plaintiff also has a go fund me site for this lawsuit.
Christina Sarich is a humanitarian and freelance writer helping you to Wake up Your Sleepy Little Head, and See the Big Picture. Her blog is Yoga for the New World. Her latest book is Pharma Sutra: Healing the Body And Mind Through the Art of Yoga.

8 Reasons To Keep An Open Mind And Think For Yourself     ~  .... what's say we take the helmit's & mitten's the fuck OFF & put Our big boy pants on ....let's try that fucking 1   Humm Oops     yer that fucking "sensitive" f~off  Lol  lil baby's

May 22, 2015 by Chris Bell.

“When all think alike, no one thinks very much.” – Walter Lippmann, 2 times Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist

Free-thinkers will all struggle at times to comprehend why mainstream viewpoints can remain unquestioned by those around them. Why people will aggressively push the dominant viewpoint even when it’s outdated, unhelpful, or even blatantly contradicted by evidence. Why these viewpoints leave no room for others to hold differing ones, and complete conformity is often the end goal, even though free-thinkers advocate individual freedom and choice.

How can free-thinkers comprehend the static viewpoints many hold about the important issues that affect our lives? Issues that free-thinkers see as demanding continuous, rigorous debate and evaluation, and an openness to adaptation and change. Issues regarding lifestyles, food, the environment, animal welfare, nutrition, health, war, peace, human diversity, all manner of social systems, parenting, governments, politics, education, science, religion and spirituality.

Groupthink

I have found one of the most powerful influences in life is social system regulation and stability. When one person disagrees with us we can shrug it off, but when several people disagree with us the effect is very powerful, our ability to reality-test is being compromised. For asking as little as an open question or sharing an alternative viewpoint, others may automatically experience our actions as offensive, and we can be ostracised to the out-group of our society.

In 1972 social psychologist Irving Janis coined “groupthink,” a term that describes this phenomenon. The Psychologists for Social Responsibility summarise groupthink thusly:

“…[Groupthink] occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of ‘mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment.’ (Janis, 1972, p.9) Groups affected by groupthink ignore alternatives and tend to take irrational actions that dehumanize other groups.

When pressures for unanimity seem overwhelming, members are less motivated to realistically appraise the alternative courses of action available to them. These group pressures lead to carelessness and irrational thinking since groups experiencing groupthink fail to consider all alternatives and seek to maintain unanimity. Decisions shaped by groupthink have low probability of achieving successful outcomes.”

8 Symptoms of Groupthink

(Janis, 1982, adapted from The Psychologists for Social Responsibility)

1. Illusion of invulnerability – Creates excessive optimism that encourages taking extreme risks. Ignoring group and individual member vulnerabilities leads to incomplete and skewed risk assessments.
2. Collective rationalization – Members discount warnings and do not reconsider their assumptions. Everything can be, and is explained away.
3. Belief in inherent morality – Members believe in the rightness of their cause and therefore ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions.
4. Stereotyped views of out-groups – Negative views of “enemy” make effective responses to conflict seem unnecessary. Ad hominem attacks are a sign of this.
5. Direct pressure on dissenters – Members are under pressure not to express arguments against any of the group’s views. Alternative viewpoints are automatically experienced as offensive and controversial.
6. Self-censorship – Doubts and deviations from the perceived group consensus are not expressed.
7. Illusion of unanimity – The majority view and judgments are assumed to be unanimous. Silence is taken as consensus.
8. Self-appointed “mindguards” – Members protect the group and the leader from information that is problematic or contradictory to the group’s cohesiveness, view, and/or decisions. Organizations, astroturfers, and propogandists perform these roles.

Why Groupthink Has Gone Global

I believe numerous factors have contributed to the current dominance of groupthink. We live in increasingly competitive societies. Admitting to confusion or error exposes our vulnerability, and being vulnerable when we are surrounded by others seeking to one-up us in the hierarchy is often dangerous. We learn to fear our vulnerability and do whatever it takes to avoid it,  including seeking the safety of the group by complying with their dominant viewpoints, thereby avoiding the accountability of making errors.

We have social systems (parenting, education, work, law) which teach us that obedience, conformity, and fear of authority are valued over advanced ethical and moral reasoning, over free, critical, and creative thought. We are increasingly a global collective pulled from such differing lives, perhaps coaxing us into premature aggreeableness on many issues, just to feel some sense of connection, belonging, and safety. Finally, all manner of organizations and individuals have found their interests can be well served by fostering and harnessing the mechanisms of groupthink.

Overcoming Groupthink

So how can free thinkers exist in an age of global groupthink? The biggest lesson I am learning is to not fall victim to groupthink ourselves. All viewpoints can create groupthink if information sources and groups are too insular. To be comfortable evaluating the full spread of information requires that we are in touch with our human capacity for vulnerability.

Vulnerability allows us to be accepting of the fact that trial and error and continuous revision and update are part of the process of authentic learning and quality decision-making. It’s knowing that we may be wrong and confused many times as we work it through, and that’s okay. Vulnerability allows us to harness the confusion conflicting information may cause in us to drive further learning, to go there, rather than being consumed by frustration, fear, and shame.

On communicating alternative viewpoints when I can feel I am being pressured into self-censorship by groupthink, I am finding it best not to use groupthink tactics myself. I try to present information as neutrally as possible, to source quality (groupthink-free) information, and to let arguments stand on their own merits rather than on manipulative, emotionally charged rhetoric. Overall, I try to be respectful of the vulnerability of other humans and their right to draw their own conclusions. In my own experience, fostering a sense of comfortability with vulnerability acts as a strong antidote to groupthink.

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References
Janis, Irving L. (1972). Victims of Groupthink. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Janis, Irving L. (1982). Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes. Second Edition. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
If interested you can read more about Irving Janis and groupthink theory here. http://www.psysr.org/about/pubs_resources/groupthink%20overview.htm

Quantum black hole study opens bridge to another universe

SCIENCE

By Brian Dodson
October 6, 2013

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Quantum black hole study finds bridge to another Universe (Image: Shutterstock)
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Physicists have long thought that the singularities associated with gravity (like the inside of a black hole) should vanish in a quantum theory of gravity. It now appears that this may indeed be the case. Researchers in Uruguay and Louisiana have just published a description of a quantum black hole using loop quantum gravity in which the predictions of physics-ending singularities vanish, and are replaced by bridges to another universe.

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Singularities, such as the infinitely strong crushing forces at the center of a black hole, in a physical theory are bad. What they tell you is that your description of the universe fails miserably to explain what happens as you approach the singularity. Tricks can sometimes resolve what appears to be singular behavior, but essential singularities are signs of a failure of the physical description itself.

Satellite orbiting Earth is guided by the spacetime curvature generated by the Earth's mass (Photo: NASA)

General relativity has been summed up by the late John Wheeler's phrase: "Spacetime tells matter how to move, matter tells spacetime how to curve." Relativity is riddled with essential singularities, because gravity is both attractive and nonlinear – curvature in the presence of mass tends to lead to more curvature, eventually leading to trouble.
The result is rather similar to a PA system on the verge of producing a feedback whistle. If you whisper into the microphone (small gravitational fields) the positive feedback isn't enough to send the PA into oscillation, but talking at a normal volume (larger gravitational fields) produces that horrible howl. Whispering is the comparable to the familiar actions of gravity that keep the planets and stars in their courses. The howl is the process that eventually leads to a singularity as the end result of gravitational collapse.
Let's follow this analogy a bit further. On a PA system, the volume of the feedback is limited by the power capacity of the amplifier, so it can't reach truly destructive levels (other than to our eardrums.) However, gravity as described by general relativity doesn't have such a limit. Since gravity is always attractive, and eventually becomes stronger than all the (known) forces that normally give volume to matter, there is nothing to keep gravitational collapse from proceeding until the curvature of the spacetime tends toward infinity – i.e. a singularity.
Remember that this is the prediction of the classical theory of gravity, general relativity. Classical physical theories contain no fundamental limitation on mass-energy density or on the size of spacetime curvature. While this may be (and probably is) incorrect, we rarely run into a problem caused by this error, so have largely ignored the problem for centuries.
Then along came gravitational collapse and black holes. First proposed by geologist John Mitchell in 1783, a black hole is a region of spacetime from which gravity prevents anything, even light, from escaping.
Black holes are formed when large stars run out of fuel. When a star's core cools, the star shrinks. As the star's layers fall inward, they are compressed by the unbalanced force of gravity, and heat up until a new balance is established. This can only go on so long, as the star (on average) gets smaller at each step of the process of collapse. Eventually the heating driven by this gravitational collapse becomes too small to hold the star up.
At this point, the size of the star depends mostly on its mass, as the force of gravity is only balanced by the ability of the star's material to resist pressure. If a star is heavy enough (8-10 times the mass of our Sun), there is no known source of material pressure which is large enough to resist gravity. In that case, the star collapses without end, and forms a black hole, from which even light cannot escape.
Black holes really began to be understood in the late 1950s, when David Finkelstein, then a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology, found that the odd behavior at the Schwartzchild radius was actually "... a perfect unidirectional membrane: causal influences can cross it but only in one direction." In other words, what falls into a black hole stays there.
In the spacetime diagram below, known as a causal diagram, the exterior and interior of a classical black hole are sketched. The yellow lines outside and the blue lines inside the black hole show the paths along which light travels. All particles have to follow slower paths that are sandwiched between these "light cones." The red line at the center of the black hole is a curvature singularity.

Nothing can emerge from a classical black hole, and at the center lies a curvature singularity (Image: Alexandre Van de Sande as adapted by B. Dodson)

As you approach the black hole, gravity causes light and particles to curve toward the black hole, which is seen as tipping of the light cones (middle). At points inside the black hole (top), the light cone is tilted so that all light, and hence all particles, can only travel deeper into the black hole. Past the event horizon of a classical black hole, there is no escape.
At the center of a black hole, all matter and light are forced to move inward at ever increasing speeds. This forces whatever enters a black hole into a single point of space right at the center. This point exhibits infinite curvature, making it a curvature singularity. At that point, no known combination of conventional quantum mechanics and general relativity can tell us what happens to the matter and light - the theories break down.
Shortly after Finkelstein's work, Roger Penrose, Steven Hawking, and Robert Geroch showed that gravitational collapse is essentially always followed by formation of essential singularities, disappointing those who hoped that singularities only formed in highly symmetric geometries. As the prediction of a singularity tells you that your physics is wrong, this emphasized the need for a better theory of gravity.

Schrodinger's Cat points out the strange paradoxes of quantum theory (Image: Doug Hatfield)

Well, the other fairly comprehensive and insanely accurate description of what happens in the universe is quantum theory. Moreover, one might guess that quantum uncertanity and fuzziness might keep curvature singularities from occurring, so it seems reasonable to try to solve the limitations of general relativity by developing a quantum theory of gravity.
Easier said than done. Hawking radiation predicts that a black body radiation is emitted by black holes as a result of quantum effects taking place very near the event horizon, which immediately leads to a serious conflict between general relativity and quantum mechanics.

Roughly speaking, what happens is that a vacuum fluctuation near the event horizon produces a virtual particle-antiparticle pair. One of the pair falls into the black hole, and the other becomes real and escapes from the black hole, as the first cannot reemerge through the black hole to recombine with the first particle.
Here's the problem. When matter and light fall into a black hole, it appears that whatever information that matter and light may have carried along with them vanishes in the process. Indeed, the sum of all Hawking radiation emitted during the life of a black hole informs you of the mass, spin, and electric charge of what fell into the hole, but nothing else.
Unfortunately, one of the fundamental tenets of quantum mechanics is that information is never destroyed. It appears that the first "successful" result combining general relativity and quantum effects leads to a fundamental conflict. This difficulty is known as the black hole information paradox.
The model used to predict Hawking radiation is pretty simplistic, consisting of ordinary quantum field theory modified to work on a curved background space. The shape of this background space is fixed, so cannot change its shape in response to the movement of light and particles. This is an example of a semiclassical model. More sophisticated semiclassical models would allow small changes in spacetime geometry, but still essentially function in a fixed background geometry.
As more and more semiclassical research has been carried out in an attempt to get a handle on what a quantum theory of gravity might look like, more and more apparent paradoxes have appeared. We won't describe these, but they become increasingly unpleasant. It appears that believing the fundamental assumptions of general relativity leads almost inevitably to fundamental problems in quantum mechanics, and vice versa.
But we don't want to wait for a full quantum theory of gravity to investigate what happens at the center of a black hole. There isn't one in sight, although some version of string theory may be the best bet on the horizon. Instead, it might be reasonable to use a model, called loop quantum gravity, which treats spacetime as a fine structure woven of Planck-sized loops. In this description of physics, there is simply no concept of lengths smaller than the Planck length. While something of the sort is likely to be true in a full quantum theory of gravity, it is expected that this structure should emerge from the theory, rather than be made a basic assumption of the theory. Even though this model may not be a viable candidate for a full theory of quantum gravity, it might give some insight into what happens at the central singularity of a quantum black hole.
This brings us to the new work of Rodolfo Gambini and Jorge Pullin, recently published in Physical Review Letters. Gambini and Pullin have developed and solved the first well-behaved model of a quantum black hole, in which the central curvature singularity vanishes, and is replaced by a bridge that appears to lead into another universe. Other details of their treatment offer promise for reconciling other apparent paradoxes associated with blending general relativity and quantum mechanics. They are currently trying to extend their work to study of an evaporating quantum black hole.
Despite the limitations of this result, it is encouraging to know that the best model of a quantum black hole currently available appears consistent with what generations of physicists had hoped would be the case; that quantum effects prevent singularities.
Source: Loop quantization of the Schwarzschild black hole via ArXiv [PDF]

About the Author

From an early age Brian wanted to become a scientist. He did, earning a Ph.D. in physics and embarking on an R&D career which has recently broken the 40th anniversary. What he didn't expect was that along the way he would become a patent agent, a rocket scientist, a gourmet cook, a biotech entrepreneur, an opera tenor and a science writer.   All articles by Brian Dodson

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THE BANKER DEATHS SCRAPBOOK: CANADIAN INVESTMENT ADVISOR MURRAY ABBOT ADDED TO GROWING LIST     ~ dot's ,dot's ,Dot's ,folks

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Joseph P. Farrell • http://gizadeathstar.com/2015/05/the-banker-deaths-scrapbook-canadian-investment-advisor-murray-abbot-added-to-growing-list/

There has been another sad death of a "banker" to add to a growing, and growing perplexing, list, this time of Canadian Murray Abbot, an investment advisor for Morgan Stanley. (These two articles were shared by Ms. K.F., and Mr. C.S., to whom goes our gratitude); Missing Morgan Stanley trader found dead in Lake Ontario near Toronto’s Beaches
Murray Abbott, Missing Morgan Stanley Trader, Dies at 36
There are some oddities to note here, not the least being that the Financial Post article of May 12, reference Bloomberg as the source of its story, and the Bloomberg article itself, which is dated May 11, one day before. In the May 11th article, we read the following:

His death wasn’t suspicious, Mark Pugash, a Toronto Police Service spokesman, said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “It was obviously a very tragic missing person’s case."

The death is not suspicious, merely "a very tragic missing person's case." Yet, a day later, this appears to have been tacitly retracted by the second article;

"Police are awaiting an autopsy before determining the cause of death of Abbott, who went missing two weeks ago, Detective Constable Neil Thornton said in a telephone interview Monday."

One might wonder what caused this subtle change, but perhaps it was careful consideration of the fact that the unfortunate Mr. Abbot was missing for approximately two weeks before being found. Presumably, if he had somehow fallen into Lake Ontario and drowned early on in the two week period, he would most likely have been found much sooner than he was. While Lake Ontario is a big place, big enough to lose a body in, it is also a busy place. This might suggest that he met his end prior to ending up in Lake Ontario, and thus, an autopsy might lead to conclusions that his death was something other than "a very tragic missing person's case."
Well... maybe...
But if it was not just another "very tragic missing person's case," then what might it be? There's a pattern that Mr. Abbot fits, and it's here:

Abbott was a vice president and one of 16 people on the institutional equities desk at Morgan Stanley’s Canadian wealth-management division. He joined the New York-based bank in 2010, following jobs at Toronto-based brokerage Blackmont Capital Inc. and Research Capital Corp.

“He was larger than life, a very gregarious guy, very well liked by clients,” Laura Adams, head of Morgan Stanley’s Canadian equity-distribution business, said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “He was just a super guy.”

Abbott’s clients included mutual funds, pension plans, hedge funds and banks, according to Adams, who hired Abbott and was his manager.
“Clients really enjoyed working with him, he was well liked and had a very strong network across Bay Street,” Adams said. “He just worked really hard and had a great work ethic.”

One part of that pattern fits many of the other strange bankers' deaths that we have blogged about on this website, namely, Mr. Abbot was a respected co-worker, very professional, and well-liked, and, apparently, a very moral and ethical man. This pattern we have seen before, as mystified family and friends are at a loss to explain why their loved ones would commit "suicide"(or rather, as we suspect in many cases, have been suicided). This factor is, I submit, an important one in the whatever pattern may be emerging in these suspicious deaths, for it connotes individuals who, if they were to encounter data or activities in conflict with their principles, might be constrained to report it or otherwise bring it to the attention of authorities, either within their own corporate structures, or within their respective national governments.
And here Mr. Abbot fits yet another pattern that seems to be repeated in these deaths, namely, he was in a position to encounter such data and/or activities in the first place. In this respect, Mr. Abbot had access to data concerning "institutional equities, mutual funds, pension plans, hedge funds, and banks." This conglomeration would have put him into a position to see, perhaps, aggregate financial activity of a suspicious nature. In this, he joins a growing list of suspicious deaths that would seem to indicate that someone, somewhere, is trying to conceal something. The question is, what?
Here my "high octane speculation" differs somewhat with that of others who have covered these stories, in that I do not think these banker death have anything to do with scenarios of "immanent collapse" of the western financial system. At least, not in the conventional sense. Rather, I think they might have everything to do with people who might have discovered significant evidence for the existence of what I have called a "hidden system of finance," one put into place after World War Two to fund both massive and long term covert operations projects, and massive and long term black projects research projects. Additionally, one might assume that in addition to uncovering evidence of such a system, people in the position of Mr. Abbot might have gained peculiar insight into the actual day-to-day detailed functioning of such a system. As such, they would pose a threat not only to that system, but to national security, if they threatened to expose it.  But even  here one is left with something of a mystery: why go to all the trouble of murdering so many bankers under such increasingly suspicious circumstances, thereby drawing further attention to something that one would presumably want to keep entirely out of the public's eye? Why not simply "threaten" or "warn" such people into silence? Unless, of course, they already had been so warned.
In the end, we are left with more questions than answers, but, as the list grows, the pattern outlined above becomes clearer, with each addition confirming its broad outlines. And with the mention, in Mr. Abbot's case, of institutional equities and hedge funds, the possibility of my "high octane speculation" being perhaps the motivation behind these deaths would seem to have been ratcheted up considerably.