BOMBSHELL: New York Times exposes academic scientists prostituting themselves out to Monsanto and the biotech industry
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
http://www.naturalnews.com/051098_Monsanto_influence_academic_prostitutes_New_York_Times.html
(NaturalNews) File this under the category of "journalism we never thought we'd see." In a New York Times article published over the weekend,
writer Eric Lipton covers the outrageous academic fraud taking place
across America as university "scientists" prostitute themselves out to
the biotech industry.
It's important that we, the pioneers of the New Media news movement, give credit where it's due in the mainstream media. With this story by Lipton, The New York Times has just trumped everybody else in the mainstream media. Sellout papers like The Washington Post -- whose entire editorial board is practically run by Monsanto -- would never dare publish such an investigative story. Somehow, The New York Times has now come to the realization that Big Biotech's academic fraud is too large and shady to keep ignoring.
It's
time the truth finally came out. And the truth is that there is a long
list of universities, scientists and even journalists who are all bought
and paid for by the biotech industry. That list is now starting to come
out.
US Right to Know did the investigative research cited by The New York Times
The breaking story is based on the extraordinary investigative work of Gary Ruskin and the U.S. Right To Know
organization, which supports GMO labeling and full transparency of
"scientists" who claim to be "independent" voices on GMOs. As Natural News readers have now come to realize, there is no such thing as an independent pro-GMO scientist. They're all science-for-hire biotech mercenaries who parrot the same B.S. line, "My opinions are my own."
Every
single scientist that's publicly defending Monsanto has direct or
indirect ties to the biotech industry, it turns out. And these secret emails now coming out about Kevin Folta and Monsanto reveal the deep, shady layers of collusion and academic corruption that deliberately distort the GMO debate in America.
Big
Biotech, it seems, is Big Tobacco all over again, with all its
fraudulent science and financial corruption of universities,
institutions and even scientific journals.
Biotech sleazebag Kevin Folta of the University of Florida: a real "class act" who lied about taking money from Monsanto
Here's just a small taste of what The New York Times wrote about biotech sleazebag Kevin Folta, an academic prostitute whom we just covered for taking $25,000 from Monsanto while repeatedly claiming he was "independent" up until the day his financial ties were exposed. Folta joins other biotech sleazebags like Jon Entine, a former Forbes.com defamation con artist who's also exposed as a biotech industry shill in the documents linked to by The New York Times:
Dr.
Folta is among the most aggressive and prolific biotech proponents,
although until his emails were released last month, he had not publicly
acknowledged the extent of his ties to Monsanto.
...A few weeks
later, the Council for Biotechnology Information — controlled by BASF,
Bayer, Dow Chemical, DuPont and Monsanto — asked Dr. Folta and other
prominent academics if they would participate in a new website, GMO
Answers, which was established to combat perceived misinformation about
their products. The plan was to provide the academics with questions
from the public, such as, "Do GMOs cause cancer?"
"This is a new
way to build trust, dialogue and support for biotech in agriculture that
will help explain in an independent voice what GMOs are," an executive
at Ketchum wrote to Dr. Folta.
But Ketchum did more than provide
questions. On several occasions, it also gave Dr. Folta draft answers,
which he then used nearly verbatim, a step that he now says was a
mistake.
Additional excerpts from the NYT piece:
Monsanto,
the world's largest seed company, and its industry partners retooled
their lobbying and public relations strategy to spotlight a rarefied
group of advocates: academics, brought in for the gloss of impartiality
and weight of authority that come with a professor's pedigree.
...But
even some of the academics who have accepted special "unrestricted
grants" or taken industry-funded trips to help push corporate agendas on
Capitol Hill say they regret being caught up in this nasty food fight.
...the
biotech industry has published dozens of articles, under the names of
prominent academics, that in some cases were drafted by industry
consultants.
...Monsanto and its industry partners have also
passed out an undisclosed amount in special grants to scientists like
Kevin Folta, the chairman of the horticultural sciences department at
the University of Florida, to help with "biotechnology outreach" and to
travel around the country to defend genetically modified foods.
...Dr.
Folta, the emails show, soon became part of an inner circle of industry
consultants, lobbyists and executives who devised strategy on how to
block state efforts to mandate G.M.O. labeling and, most recently, on
how to get Congress to pass legislation that would pre-empt any state
from taking such a step.
...biotech companies paid for his trips to testify in Pennsylvania and Hawaii...
...In
August 2014, Monsanto decided to approve Dr. Folta's grant for $25,000
to allow him to travel more extensively to give talks on the genetically
modified food industry's products.
...[Monsanto], in late 2011,
gave a grant for an undisclosed amount to Bruce M. Chassy, a professor
emeritus at the University of Illinois, to support "biotechnology
outreach and education activities," his emails show.
In the same
email in which Dr. Chassy negotiated the release of the grant funds, he
discussed with a Monsanto executive a monthslong effort to persuade the
Environmental Protection Agency to abandon its proposal to tighten the
regulation of pesticides used on insect-resistant seeds.
...Dr.
Chassy eventually set up a meeting at the E.P.A., with the help of an
industry lobbyist, and the agency ultimately dropped the proposal.
...In
2013, Monsanto also asked David R. Shaw, the vice president for
research and economic development at Mississippi State University, to
intervene with the Department of Agriculture to help persuade the agency
to approve a new type of genetically modified soybean and cottonseed
designed by Monsanto.
Organic farmers argued against this move,
convinced that approval of the new seeds would lead to an increase in
potentially harmful herbicide use. Monsanto wanted Dr. Shaw, whom the
company has supported over the last decade with at least $880,000 in
research grants for projects he helped oversee, to refute these
arguments, the emails show.
Read the full New York Times piece here.
Astonishing Encounters: Bigfoot, Mothmen and More
It’s always a good day when a new book from Stan Gordon arrives in the mail. And that’s exactly what happened on Friday of last week. Stan’s new one is titled Astonishing Encounters: Pennsylvania’s Unknown Creatures, Casebook Three.
Like me, Stan concludes that many of the so-called “cryptids” of our
world (whether Bigfoot, lake monsters, huge winged things, and large
black cats) are not just unknown or out-of-place animals. And, also like
me, Stan doesn’t take that view just because he chooses to. No. He
takes that view because it’s what the evidence strongly suggests.
After a cool introduction – in which Stan reveals how and why he was
drawn to the subject of UFOs and strange creatures as a kid – we launch
straight into Chapter 1, with Bigfoot. As Stan shows us, the
Pennsylvanian Bigfoot is a weird beast, indeed. That’s to say, it’s a
creature that is steeped in what has become popularly known in the field
of Forteana as “high-strangeness.”
Consider the following, all of which appear in the pages of Astonishing Encounters: there are cases involving witnesses, driving late at night, and encountering a Bigfoot. But, here’s the really
strange thing: as they see the beast, their car begins to malfunction.
Everything returns to normal when the hairy giant is gone. Stan has more
than a few cases on file of Bigfoot seen in so-called “Lovers Lane”
areas. I have many cases such as these from the UK. And there are
parallels with some of the Mothman cases from 1960s-era Point Pleasant,
West Virginia, too.
Stan also shares with us his files on vanishing Bigfoot. No, I don’t
mean when the creatures – realizing they have been seen – race for the
safety of dark and dense woods. I mean when the Bigfoot disappears right
in front of the witness. As in literally vanishes. We also get
to learn about Pennsylvania’s phenomenon of dwarfish Bigfoot.
“Littlefoot,” we might say. There also the fascinating story of a
Bigfoot that appeared to be “out of focus.” Clearly, none of this data
sits well at all with the idea that Bigfoot is just an unknown
ape. And that’s good: it’s about time people realized that Bigfoot is
far more than just that. And Stan’s book makes that point time and
again.
Astonishing Encounters also contains numerous reports of
unidentified flying things. Typically, they fall into the same kinds of
categories of winged things that appear elsewhere in the world. We’re
talking about (a) creatures that resemble long-extinct pterodactyls; (b)
giant birds that look like the mighty Thunderbirds of Native American
lore and history (described by one witness as an “eagle on steroids”);
(c) Mothman-style creatures; (d) winged humanoids; and (e) monsters that
have a “giant bat”-like appearance.
Then there are the ABCs: the Alien Big Cats. The ABC phenomenon is
not just an American enigma. Reports of large, elusive, black cats can
be found in numerous countries. Just as is the case with Bigfoot,
however, ABC reports are sometimes tied to other curious phenomena and
are clearly something more than mere “circus/zoo escapees.” For example,
we are treated to a very strange case from Pennsylvania of an ABC that
not only vanished into nothingness before the astonished witness, but
which actually grew in size as the witness stared at it. What
began as something about the size of a house cat, said the witness,
quickly mutated into something of the size of a “black panther.” It’s
worth noting (as this link demonstrates) that reports of cryptids growing in size, as the witness looks at them, do get reported now and again.
Strange creatures of the water are also studied by Stan, as he shares
numerous witness accounts of unknown leviathans seen in the waters of
Pennsylvania – and briefly leaving the waters too. This is a chapter
that will be of particular interest to those of you who are intrigued by
the whole “lake monster” phenomenon, since it doesn’t go over old
ground. Instead, it shows us that in the world of water monsters, there
is still much to be learned.
Then, we have a number of rogue cases that are fascinating but which
are hard to categorize. They include the sighting of werewolf-style
creatures – and not unlike those studied and written about by werewolf
authority, Linda Godfrey. There’s the story of a 10-foot-tall
“stick-man,” which sounds very much like the “meme come to life” known as the Slenderman.
Add to that, animals which sound not unlike the “Texas Chupacabra,”
tales of weird creatures and UFOs, and even a flying dragon, and you
have a great, thought-provoking collection of accounts. They demonstrate
time and again that, yes, there are unknown creatures out there. But, labeling them “animals” may be a big mistake.
Halloween’s not too far away, so if you’re looking for a spooky read on the world’s weirdest night, Stan Gordon’s Astonishing Encounters is definitely recommended.
AMAIRIKUHN EDGYKAYSHUN: COMMON CORE ROTTENNESS STRIKES SOUTH DAKOTA, OR DOES IT?
Mr.
C.S. shared this article, and since it concerns two of my "hot button"
issues - my home state, South Dakota, and the Common Core standards and
assessment process - I simply have to talk about it.
South Dakota is a wonderfully backward place, culturally speaking.
And I always appreciated this fact about the state. The latest trendy
fad coming out of the northeast or, worse, the left coast, always
arrived a decade late and much diluted once it reached the Dakotas, or
Montana, Wyoming, or - barring Omaha and Lincoln - Nebraska. But by
"culturally backward" I do not mean to imply illiterate. Quite the
contrary. Its backwardness assured a certain grounding in the
essentials. I grew up in a state surrounded by Germans, Dutch, Swedes,
and Norwegians, who insisted that (1) I learn a foreign language, and
learn it reasonably well enough to carry on a conversation in it (I
chose German, which one heard a lot in South Dakota anyway, along with
healthy dollops of Norwegian and, if you ventured a few miles from Sioux
Falls, Dutch), (2) learn the arts, which meant actually having to read
Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, to learn about Degas and Cezanne from my
elementary school art teacher Mrs. Olson(there's that Norwegian
influence again), and to actually listen to Mozart or Edvard
Grieg or (of course) J.S Bach, and not simply the Beach Boys. We had to
read about Lakota history and Chief Bull-Who-Sits-Down (Sitting Bull),
Wounded Knee, and the sad history of the local Native American Indian
population, long before it became trendy or politically correct to do
so. We had endless map tests in grade school and junior high
school, of blank countries with rivers, which we had to name, place dots
for the major cities reasonably close to where they actually were, and
spell them correctly. We had to do this for Europe, North and South
America, and significant chunks of Asia. My eighth grade shop teacher,
Mr. Goering (yes, that was really his name!) who spoke with such a heavy
German accent was a hard task master in drafting class(yes, drafting,
in the eighth grade). My second year German teacher, Frau Gunhilde
Brakas, began her class that fateful year with this sentence: "Good
afternoon students; I am Frau Brakas, and this is the last English
sentence you will hear in this class this year," and for the next few
difficult sink-or-swim weeks, it was. In the seventh grade, we learned
about the huge shale oil reserves in the the northwest corner of the
state, where unbeknownst to me at the time, one of my god-children was
growing up on a sheep ranch and learning to play the pipe organ. More
Norwegians, more Bach on the prairie. And mathematics? Well, this too
was a constant staple. And even music theory.
And now, looking back on it all, I see not only how fortunate and
blessed I was, but also I see and notice something else: through it all,
my teachers seldom if ever "taught to the test", which in our case were
the endless ACTs, Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, and so on. We had them,
but they didn't teach to them, and perhaps that is why South Dakota
neither did well, nor poorly, on national averages of "standardized test
scores" at the time. And thank God for that, for there was a Texas-like
independence to the state, but of a subtler and quieter sort than one
encounters in the Lone Star republic, though I am resorting to a bit of
Texas noisiness here, and for a purpose, and the purpose is this
article:
South Dakota drops teaching high schoolers about American revolution, founding documents
I find this article interesting for a number of reasons, chiefly
being that once again teachers and professors in South Dakota find
themselves at odds with the federally mandated claptrap called common
core, and this time over whether or not the US Constitution and (much
more importantly) Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence are to
be taught. As one gathers from the article, these have already been
denuded from the cirruculum in the Dakotas (shame on you, Pierre and
Bismarck!) and it is actually the college professors who are
complaining. There's the usual bit of edgykayshunal psychoblither, such
as history not really being about "timelines" but about "informed
decision making", and I won't bother to rehearse that bit of pabulum
here. Suffice it to say, when I was in school, I had to memorize
timelines, names, and dates, and I don't think I'm any the worse the
wear for Mrs. Zimmermann or Mrs. Rosine insisting I do so. After all,
knowing when something happened is crucial to knowing the why and the how events and decisions relate.
But what I found rather encouraging is that the Sioux Falls newspaper, the Argus-Leader
that my dad read every night, seems to be rethinking the commitment to
all the claptrap, and advocating for a thorough and detailed knowledge
of the Constitution. And that's good, because once one opens that box,
and peers inside, one also has to look at the Federalist Papers and, much more importantly, at the Anti-Federalist papers and the Declaration of Independence, at the Stamp Act, at the history of Great Britian and its constitutional evolution. If we keep invoking the Constitution, wouldn't it be a nice idea to read it? To understand its Federalist defenders and Anti-Federalist detractors, and to have read them too?
So, my initial reaction of horror, when I first read this article,
has tempered just a bit. For I recognize the quiet South Dakota pattern
that I remember, that pattern of "pass what laws you will, we'll obey
the letter, and circumvent the spirit, and do our own thing anyway."
I hope that spirit not only lives there still, but that it spreads.
The proof is in the pudding, I suppose, and here's my proof, for
after many years, it's appropriate to thank all those people, all those teachers,
who so blessed me, and the fact that I remember them all, is a
testimony to their virtue and quality as individuals, and teachers, who -
Bill Gates, Jeb Bush, Hillary CLinton and other twitified elites'
advocacy of machines and standardized tests and online education and
"common core" and individualized adaptive standardized assessment
processes notwithstanding - managed to impart a hunger for learning, and
a desire for truth mediated the time-honored way, through their sheer
ability to communicate the human essence of each discipline. So a
belated, long overdue, and huge thank you to my teachers: Miss Cantrell
(first grade), Miss McKillop (second grade), Mrs. McClain (third grade),
Mrs. Johnson(fourth grade), Mrs. Zimmermann(fifth grade, and her
passion for reading and music), Mr. Roth (sixth grade, and his passion
for reading in all subjects), Miss Klosterboer, Mr. Hochstetter, Mr.
Selnes, Mrs. Rosine(and her passion for the "antiquated" discipline of
recitation), Mr. Aschbauer, Mr. Goering, Mrs. Olson, Miss Trisch, Mr.
Fialkowski, Mrs. Connors (who taught me the joys of epigraphs and
footnoting in the "Chicago" manner, and not the short-cuts and
pseudo-referencing that passes for it now: you made Oxford possible!)
and so many other specialized teachers throughout junior and senior high
school: thank you. And to the principals who had the good sense to hire
them: Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Oyan: a thank you as well.
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