MONSANTO FIGHTS FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT, DENIES OUR RIGHT TO KNOW

ONLY MONSANTO WOULD TRY TO KEEP AMERICANS FROM REQUESTING VITAL INFORMATION ON GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS AND MONSANTO'S AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS!  

WHAT'S SO BAD THAT THEY WILL SPEND BILLIONS TO HIDE IT?
MONSANTO HAS BEEN EXTREMELY ANGRY SINCE ITS BESTSELLER, "ROUNDUP" WAS LISTED AS A "PROBABLE CARCINOGEN" AND THE WORLD LEARNED ABOUT THE FAKED RESEARCH THAT WENT INTO THAT LETHAL HERBICIDE.

HAVING HAD RESEARCH DOCUMENTS AND COMPANY INFORMATION REVEALED BY AMERICANS USING THE ONE TOOL WE ALL HAVE TO LOOK BEHIND CLOSED DOORS AT THE MEGA-CORPORATIONS, AND SEEING WHAT CITIZENS HAVE FOUND POSTED TO THE INTERNET, SOMETIMES VIEWED BY MILLIONS ACROSS THE GLOBE, MONSANTO IS GRASPING AT STRAWS TO STOP US FROM SEEING ANYTHING ELSE!

YOU MAY BE UNAWARE THAT THE BROTHEL WE CALL 'CONGRESS' PASSED A BILL DENYING AMERICANS THE RIGHT TO KNOW IF WE ARE BUYING/EATING GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS, FOODS THAT HAVE BEEN AND ARE STILL BEING PROVEN TO CAUSE A MYRIAD OF HEALTH PROBLEMS IN HUMANS, ESPECIALLY CHILDREN.

July 23, 2015
The House on Thursday passed hotly contested legislation that would keep states from issuing mandatory labeling laws for foods that contain genetically modified organisms, often called GMOs.

The Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015, which passed 275-150, would instead create a federal standard for the voluntary labeling of foods with GMO ingredients.

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), who authored the bill, called mandatory labeling laws — which have already passed in Vermont, Connecticut and Maine — unnecessarily costly given that GMOs have been deemed safe by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Opponents have pushed back against the legislation, saying it will keep consumers from knowing what’s in their food and stop FDA from crafting a national GMO-labeling solution.
“What’s the problem with letting consumers know what they are buying?” asked Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.).

[THAT'S WHAT WE SHOULD ALL BE ASKING!
IF THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH GM FOODS, WHY NOT LABEL THEM?
BECAUSE THEY KNOW SO MANY AMERICANS DON'T WANT TO BUY THEM OR EAT THEM, THEY FIGHT OUR RIGHT OF CHOICE!]

The House rejected two Democratic amendments to enhance GMO-labeling requirements. 

One offered by DeLauro, which failed 163-262, would have banned the use of the term “natural” on food that contains a genetically engineered plant. 

[THAT IS SIMPLY A FACT...GMOs ARE NOT NATURAL, NOT FOUND IN NATURE, BUT LAB-CREATED!]

Another proposal from DeFazio that would have forced any U.S. company that labels a product as containing GMOs in a foreign country to label the equivalent product the same way in the U.S. went down by a vote of 123-303.

[YOU SEE, OTHER NATIONS ARE NOT BEHOLDING TO MONSANTO LIKE OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS ARE IN 'CONGRESS', SO THEY INSIST ON GMOs BEING LABELED SO THEIR CITIZENS CAN REJECT THE CURSED THINGS!]

A third amendment offered by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) that would have given Native American tribes the authority to prohibit or restrict the cultivation of GMO crops on tribal lands failed 196-227.

[THIS IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL AS IS THE REST OF THIS "BILL"!
OUR CONSTITUTION NEVER APPOINTED CONGRESS OR ANY FEDERAL AGENCY TO DICTATE WHAT WE EAT OR FORCE US TO EAT ANYTHING!
TO TELL AMERICAN INDIANS THEY HAVE TO ALLOW GMO CROPS ON TRIBAL LAND WHICH WILL CROSS-POLLINATE AND RUIN ANCIENT SEED STOCK IS CRIMINAL!]

DO YOU SEE WHAT'S BEEN TAKEN AWAY FROM US?
THE FREEDOM OF CHOICE AND THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE SOURCE OF WHAT WE FEED OUR CHILDREN AND OURSELVES!

AN ARTICLE IN THE HUFFINGTON POST SHOWS HOW MONSANTO IS TRYING TO STOP US FROM REQUESTING MORE DATA BY THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA).

NOW THAT WE'VE BEEN WARNED THIS IS COMING, MAYBE WE CAN STOP MONSANTO FROM HIDING WHATEVER IT IS THEY SO OBVIOUSLY DON'T WANT THE WORLD TO SEE.

IT IS A CLEVER MANEUVER BY MONSANTO, AND THEY MAY JUST PULL IT OFF YET UNLESS WATCHDOG GROUPS AND WE, THE PEOPLE, DEMAND OUR RIGHT TO SEE WHAT OTHERS WANT TO HIDE.

OUR HEALTH, OUR LIVES ARE AT STAKE.

FROM HUFFPOST:

Monsanto and Its Promoters vs. Freedom of Information   

U.S. Right to Know, a nonprofit consumer group staffed by consumer advocates, is conducting an investigation of the food and agrichemical industries, including companies like Monsanto, and how they use front groups and taxpayer-funded professors at public universities to advance their claims that processed foods, artificial additives, and GMOs are safe, wholesome, and beyond reproach.

Based on documents that U.S. Right to Know obtained through the FOIA, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Eric Lipton wrote a front page New York Times article about how Monsanto and the agrichemical industry use publically-funded scientists to lobby, and to promote its messages and products. 

For example, Lipton reported on a $25,000 grant from Monsanto to University of Florida Professor Kevin Folta, who had repeatedly denied having ties to Monsanto: 

"'This is a great 3rd-party approach to developing the advocacy that we're looking to develop,' Michael Lohuis, the director of crop biometrics at Monsanto, wrote last year in an email as the company considered giving Dr. Folta an unrestricted grant." 

[A GREAT EXPOSE' ABOUT THE "GOOD DOCTOR" CAN BE FOUND <HERE>, BUT DO READ THE NYT ARTICLE]

One thing is clear; food safety, public health, the commercialization of public universities, corporate control of science, and the research produced by taxpayer-funded scientists to promote commercial products are all appropriate subjects for FOIA requests.

The use of the FOIA by citizens, journalists, and others to expose scandals is essential to ensure honest scientific inquiry and is critical to developing protective public health and environmental standards. Scientific research should not be contaminated by the inevitable biases and secrecy that come with corporate contracts at public universities.

The FOIA is a valuable tool to help citizens uncover corruption and wrongdoing, and to vindicate our right to know what our own governments are doing.

BUT MONSANTO DISAGREES AND IS GATHERING THEIR LEGAL FORCES TO COMBAT FOIA!
Continuing from Huffpost:
As the FOIA approaches its 50th year, it faces a disturbing backlash from scientists tied to the agrichemical company Monsanto and its allies. 

Here are some examples.

On March 9th, three former presidents of the American Association for the Advancement of Science -- all with ties to Monsanto or the biotech industry -- wrote in the pages of the Guardian to criticize the use of the state FOIA laws to investigate taxpayer-funded scientists who vocally defend Monsanto, the agrichemical industry, their pesticides, and genetically engineered food. They called the FOIAs an "organized attack on science."

The super-secretive Monsanto has stated, regarding the FOIAs, that "agenda-driven groups often take individual documents or quotes out of context in an attempt to distort the facts, advance their agenda, and stop legitimate research."

The proper response to abuses of the FOIA is not, however, to advocate blocking citizens or reporters from using the FOIA.

There are countless government and corporate scandals that have been revealed by the FOIA, but here are just two from this year.

In February, Justin Gillis and John Schwartz of the New York Times used documents obtained by the Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center through the FOIA to expose the corporate ties of the climate-change-denying scientist Wei-Hock "Willie" Soon, who received over $1.2 million in contributions from the fossil fuel industry over the last ten years. Soon even called his scientific papers "deliverables" to his corporate donors.

Another area of risk to food and health was revealed by FOIA requests. 

There are legitimate concerns about the health and environmental perils of genetically engineered crops and food. And the concerns are mounting. 

For example, in March, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified the herbicide glyphosate - which is sprayed as Roundup on many genetically engineered crops - as "probably carcinogenic to humans."

On August 20, in the New England Journal of Medicine, Philip J. Landrigan and Charles Benbrook wrote that "the argument that there is nothing new about genetic rearrangement misses the point that GM crops are now the agricultural products most heavily treated with herbicides and that two of these herbicides may pose risks of cancer." 

Another study published on August 25 in the journal Environmental Health suggests that very low levels of exposure to Roundup "can result in liver and kidney damage" in rats, "with potential significant health implications for animal and human populations."

LET ME ADD TWO OTHER "DISCOVERIES" OF COVERUPS BY MONSANTO:

1~ HOW MONSANTO WROTE AND BROKE LAWS TO ENTER INDIA

By Dr Vandana Shiva — 21 July 2015
(Original article <here>.)

Citizens of the United States are being denied the right to know what they are feeding their families.
Despite the fact that 90% of American citizens want GMO labelling on their food, big business is doing everything it can to prevent people from accessing their rights.

Representative Pompeo’s bill, popularly known as the DARK Act (Denying Americans the Right to Know), has been written almost entirely by the biotech industry lobby. While American citizens are advocating for their rights to knowledge and healthy, affordable food, Monsanto’s legal team is busy on every legislative level trying to prevent this from happening.

Monsanto’s subversion of democratic legal processes is not new. In fact, it is their modus operandi, be it the subversion of LA’s decision to be GMO free by amending the California Seed Law—equating corporations with persons, and making seed libraries and exchange of seed beyond 3 miles illegal— or suing Maui County (HAWAII)for passing a law banning GMOs.

Decades before there was a “debate” over GMOs and Monsanto’s PR and law firms became the busiest of bees, India was introduced to this corrupting, corporate giant that had no respect for the laws of the land. When this massive company did speak of laws, these laws had been framed, essentially, by their own lawyers.

Today, Indian cotton farmers are facing a genocide that has resulted in the death of at least 300,000 of their brothers and sisters between 1995 and 2013, averaging 14,462 per year (1995-2000) and 16,743 per year (2001-2011).
This epidemic began in the cotton belt, in Maharashtra, where 53,818 farmers have taken their lives. Monsanto, on it’s own website, admits that pink bollworm “resistance [to Bt] is natural and expected” and that the resistance to Bt “posed a significant threat to the nearly 5 million farmers who were planting the product in India”. 84% of the farmer suicides have been attributed to Monsanto’s Bt Cotton, placing the corporation’s greed and lawlessness at the heart of India’s agrarian crisis.

There are three outright illegalities to Monsanto’s existence in India.

First, Monsanto undemocratically imposed the false idea of “manufacturing” and “inventing” a seed, undermining robust Indian laws—that do not allow patents on life—and by taking patents on life through international trade law. Since 1999, Monsanto has had the US government do its dirty work, blocking the mandatory review of the Monsanto Law in TRIPS (the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement implemented through the WTO).

Second, since they do not have a patent for Bt-Cotton, Monsanto’s collection of royalties as “trait value” or as a “fee for technology traits” (IPR category that does not exist in any legal framework and was concocted by Monsanto lawyers to work outside of the laws of the land) is illegal. These illegal royalty collections have been collected from the most marginal farmers, pushing them to take their own lives.

Third, the smuggling of a controlled substance without approvals (and thus Monsanto’s very entry into India) is a violation and subversion of India’s Biosafety Regulations. This includes the illegal introduction of GMOs into the food system in India, which poses grave risks to the health of ordinary Indian citizens.

PLEASE GO READ ALL THAT ARTICLE.
SEE HOW SINISTER MONSANTO CAN BE!

2~ THE SECOND, AN ARTICLE BY 'VANITY FAIR', EXPOSES MONSANTO'S RUTHLESSNESS IN DEALING WITH AMERICAN FARMERS.
IT IS A HABIT OF THE GIANT CORPORATION TO SUE SMALL FARMERS INTO BANKRUPTCY WHO REFUSE TO PLANT GM CROPS OR USE MONSANTO'S TOXIC, DANGEROUS CHEMICALS.
THEY ALSO SUE FARMERS WHOSE FIELDS MAY BECOME CROSS-POLLINATED OR "MYSTERIOUSLY" SEEDED BY MONSANTO'S NEIGHBORING FIELDS OF GMOs, CLAIMING "PATENT VIOLATIONS" WHEN THE FRANKENFOODS POP UP WHERE FARMERS NEVER PLANTED THEM!

Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear

Monsanto goes after farmers, farmers’ co-ops, seed dealers—anyone it suspects may have infringed its patents of genetically modified seeds. As interviews and reams of court documents reveal, Monsanto relies on a shadowy army of private investigators and agents in the American heartland to strike fear into farm country.

They fan out into fields and farm towns, where they secretly videotape and photograph farmers, store owners, and co-ops; infiltrate community meetings; and gather information from informants about farming activities. Farmers say that some Monsanto agents pretend to be surveyors.

Others confront farmers on their land and try to pressure them to sign papers giving Monsanto access to their private records. Farmers call them the “seed police” and use words such as “Gestapo” and “Mafia” to describe their tactics.

When asked about these practices, Monsanto declined to comment specifically, other than to say that the company is simply protecting its patents.
 “Monsanto spends more than $2 million a day in research to identify, test, develop and bring to market innovative new seeds and technologies that benefit farmers,” Monsanto spokesman Darren Wallis wrote in an e-mailed letter to Vanity Fair. "

READ THAT ARTICLE, SEE HOW MONSANTO OPERATES TO ELIMINATE SMALL FARMS AND BANKRUPT AMERICAN FARMERS.

MONSANTO SPENDS $2 MILLION A DAY TO CREATE FOODS AND PRODUCTS THAT MORE AND MORE PEOPLE ACROSS THE GLOBE SIMPLY DO NOT WANT!

NO WONDER THEY'RE SCRAMBLING!
WHEN ENOUGH PEOPLE KNOW THE TRUTH, MONSANTO JUST MAY SELF-DESTRUCT BY OVERSPENDING IN AMERICAN AND FOREIGN COURTS TRYING TO CRAM THEIR TOXINS DOWN OUR THROATS.

THAT CAN'T HAPPEN TOO SOON TO SUIT MOST PEOPLE NOW!

EVEN THE WHITE HOUSE PROTECTS MONSANTO!
WHY?
WHY DOES MONSANTO NEED PROTECTION FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND WHY WOULD HE DO THAT FOR THEM?

White House Refuses to Release Email From Monsanto-Linked Lobbyist

The White House is withholding documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by an environmental group that suspects the Obama administration of working with Monsanto-linked lobbyists to defend the planting of genetically engineered (GE) crops in wildlife refuges across the country.

The information currently being withheld includes a portion of a January 2011 email that a top White House policy analyst received from a lobbyist with the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), which represents GE seed companies such as Monsanto and Syngenta.

The US has also has put heavy diplomatic pressure in recent years on countries such as France and Spain to accept exports and GE crop technology, as revealed by WikiLeaks released cables!

MONSANTO WANTS THAT SORT OF THING HIDDEN, HUSHED-UP.
IT CUTS INTO CORPORATE PROFITS, AND PROFITS OUTWEIGH HUMAN HEALTH TO MONSANTO, OBVIOUSLY.

A LOOK AT HOW MANY NATIONS HAVE BANNED SOME OR ALL MONSANTO PRODUCTS SHOULD PROVE THEY ARE NOT EXACTLY A TRUSTWORTHY COMPANY.

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION...WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW!
I SINCERELY HOPE YOU CONTACT YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS SOMEHOW AND LET THEM KNOW YOU HIGHLY VALUE FOIA, AND DO NOT WANT ACCESS TO SUCH INFORMATION BLOCKED...EVER.