The Monstrous Monsanto Universe

[katty]

more: http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/031308EA.shtml

The Monstrous Monsanto Universe
By Dominique Dhombres
Le Monde

Wednesday 12 March 2008

The charge sheet is horrifying, inexorable and convincing. The multinational firm Monsanto, which sells 90 percent of genetically modified organisms (GMO), massively lies to many people and even the whole planet with great success - the power that money and the - apparently unlimited - support of the United States government bestows. You already know all that if you watched Marie-Monique Robin's extraordinary documentary, "Le Monde selon Monsanto" <"The World According to Monsanto">, March 11 on the Arte channel.

The case is conducted as a personal investigation, and the director has herself filmed as she plays her computer keys to research, most often through Google, the information accessible to everyone, as long as one is willing to try to separate the wheat from the chaff in the mass of available documents. And there's an abundance of chaff, given how the company has proliferated effective advertising (intended for farmers in every country and in every language) and dubious scientific studies over the years. "On its Internet site, Monsanto presents itself as an agricultural company the mission of which is to help small farmers produce healthier food, while reducing agriculture's impact on the environment," the director explains. Neither assertion is true. Some of these foodstuffs are dangerous and their effect on nature is catastrophic in the long term. Founded in 1901 in Saint Louis (Missouri), the firm is a dangerous recidivist. It began as an industrial company manufacturing chemical products.

It has, notably, concocted impressive quantities of dioxin, the hyper-concentrated poison contained in the Agent Orange American airplanes dispersed over forests to destroy vegetation during the Vietnam War.

[mod mom]

1. Campaign Strategist Mark Penn's ties to Monsanto:

MONSANTO IS ONE OF MARK PENN'S CLIENTS:

Penn, who had previously worked in the business world for companies like Texaco and Eli Lilly, brought his corporate ideology to the White House. After moving to Washington he aggressively expanded his polling firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland (PSB). It was said that Penn was the only person who could get Bill Clinton and Bill Gates on the same phone line. Penn's largest client was Microsoft, and he saw no contradiction between working for both the plaintiff and the defense in what was at the time the country's largest antitrust case. A variety of controversial clients enlisted PSB. The firm defended Procter and Gamble's Olestra from charges that it caused anal leakage, blamed Texaco's bankruptcy on greedy jurors and market-tested genetically modified foods for Monsanto. Penn invented the concept of "inoculation," in which corporations are shielded from scandal through clever advertising and marketing. Selling an image, companies realized, was as important as winning a legislative favor.
Burson-Marsteller is hardly a natural fit for a prominent Democrat. The firm has represented everyone from the Argentine military junta to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, in which thousands were killed when toxic fumes were released by one of its plants, to Royal Dutch Shell, which has been accused of massive human rights violations in Nigeria. B-M pioneered the use of pseudo-grassroots front groups, known as "astroturfing," to wage stealth corporate attacks against environmental and consumer organizations. It set up the National Smokers Alliance on behalf of Philip Morris to fight tobacco regulation in the early 1990s. Its current clients include major players in the finance, pharmaceutical and energy industries. In 2006, with Penn at the helm, the company gave 57 percent of its campaign contributions to Republican candidates.

A host of prominent Republicans fall under Penn's purview. B-M's Washington lobbying arm, BKSH & Associates, is run by Charlie Black, a leading GOP operative who maintains close ties to the White House, including Karl Rove, and was former partners with Lee Atwater, the political consultant who crafted the Willie Horton smear campaign used by George H.W. Bush against Michael Dukakis in 1988. Black regularly disparages the Clintons; he has called Hillary a "martyr figure" and said Bill "tearfully embraced...government preferences for homosexual lifestyle." In recent years Black's clients have included the likes of Iraq's Ahmad Chalabi, the darling of the neocon right in the run-up to the war; Lockheed Martin; and Occidental Petroleum. In the summer of 2005 he landed a contract with the Lincoln Group, the disgraced PR firm that covertly placed US military propaganda in Iraqi news outlets. The agreement, according to Intelligence Online, allowed the Lincoln Group to "tap into BKSH's extensive contacts in the Republican administration." When asked by The New Yorker if there was too much cronyism in Iraq, Black responded, "I just wish I could find the cronies."

-SNIP
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070521/berman


AND MONSANTO HAS TIES TO "RURAL AMERICANS FOR HILLARY"

Yee-haw

October 18, 2007 10:06 AM

So later this month, according to THIS INVITATION, the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, is holding a "Rural Americans for Hillary" lunch and campaign briefing at the end of this month….

..but she's holding it in Washington, DC….

…at a lobbying firm…

… and specifically, though it's not mentioned in the invitation, at the lobbying firm Troutman Sanders Public Affairs…

…which just so happens to lobby for the controversial multinational agri-biotech Monsanto.

You read that right: Monsanto, about which there are serious questions about its culpability regarding 56 Superfund Sites, wanton and "outrageous" pollution, and the decidedly unkosher (and quite metaphoric) genetically-bred "Superpig."

-SNIP
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2007/10/yee-haw.html

[HCE SuiGeneris]

2. Most evil, morally corrupt organization that is allowed to function in the U.S.

They single-handedly could bring about the demise of the planet.

[texastoast]

3. Enabled by a corporatist Congress

who has sided with them in preventing the labeling and regulation of their products by far and large.

[AikidoSoul]

10. It is well on its way

we are almost there now



kick and rec

[Angela Shelley]

4. It´s a very informative "eye-opening" documentary.

[femrap]

5. Monsanto will have a big part in the death

of our planet.

[earth mom]

6. Just saw the film Michael Clayton. Monsanto immediately came to mind.

Wish the film had delved more into their crimes. Those bastards need to be exposed BIG TIME. :grr:

Also as an off the wall aside, anyone remember the Monsanto display/ride back in the 60s & 70s? It was slick, futuristic and sort of frightening. :scared:

[katty]

8. yes, when i saw the film that was my impression

[earth mom]

9. The Monsanto ride at Disneyland that is. nt

[Kat45]

13. Also just saw the film, and thought the same thing.

[intheflow]

7. One of my best friends has Crohn's Disease.

She grew up on the banks of the Chicopee River in Massachusetts, literally next door to a Monsanto plant. The chemical stench from that plant was so disgusting I held my breath every time I drove by it; in the summer without car air conditioning, I'd roll the windows up to try to cut the smell. I have no doubt whatsoever that the chemicals they spewed in the air and probably dumped in the river when my friend was a kid playing there in the '60's contributed to her disease.

K&R to expose Monsanto's greed and disregard for the planet.

[AikidoSoul]

11. It's complicated -- do you know who owns Monsanto?

For years it was a huge transnational company that almost nobody every heard of -- PHARMACIA.

Then Pfizer bought them out.

Recognize please that these huge companies cause illness and environmental destruction, and then PROFIT from the devastation.

They profit from the original sale of the original products, and then make huge profits by selling pharmaceuticals to "manage chronic illnesses" of humans and animals who were injured by their products. Environmental "remediation" is also big business. Many big chem/pharm companies that pollute, also are paid millions to "clean up" the damage.

Profit on both sides of the picture. What a business plan!

[blues90]

12. I saw a doc on monsanto not long ago

I don't recall the title but it showed a Canadian farmer showing how the GMO crops were ruining his normal crops and a woman I think in India showing how plants were being destroyed that used to grow naturally .

They showed a Canadian farmer bragging about the GMO crops he grew and also proud freaks who played with animal genetics .

I then looked through Monsanto's site and was horrified by most all of their products , many having built in defense agents against insects .

It is quite disturbing and sick stuff to think this is what is happening and most people have no idea .

They get away with this and nothing is there to stop them . It may already be too late . They even have seeds that do not reproduce plants to force farmers to buy seeds instead of using their own seeds .

I think I prefer the fast death of being vaporized rather than a slow death seen all around me .

What a wonderful world , isn't it ?