Michael Payne – Trump declares war on the media; a monumental mistake he will soon regret

You would think that a newly elected U.S. president who needs all the help he can get to achieve his objectives would think deeply about what he was going to say before he actually said it. Most incoming presidents would do just that; except this president, Donald J. Trump. Trump engaged in a running feud with this country’s national media …

Lorraine Chow – Monsanto, Bayer CEOs Pitch Mega-Merger to Trump

Bayer CEO Werner Baumann and Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant met with Donald Trump in New York to ask the president-elect to bless the companies’ planned $66 billion mega-merger. “It was a productive meeting about the future of agriculture and the need for innovation,” a Bayer spokesman told Reuters. The German chemical giant’s pending takeover of the U.S. seedmaker would form …

CHRISTINA SARICH – Pharma Companies Spend 19x More On Marketing Than Research, And Returns Are Dropping

The pharmaceutical industry swears the high cost of drugs is due to research and development costs, conveniently omitting the actual amount of money spent on the marketing of these drugs, which is exorbitantly more. A recent Deloitte report suggests that pharmaceutical companies are taking a hit because investments made in R&D on new drugs simply are not paying off anymore. [1] Read …

Organic Farmers Score New Victory in ‘David and Goliath’ GMO Fight

Organic farmers are racking up new victories in the fight against ‘franken-food’, as a growing number of counties line up to bar genetically engineered (GE) crop cultivation throughout the country. A federal judge in Jackson County, Oregon recently upheld a consent decree that designates the region a “GE-free zone,” a ruling which officially protects the decree from appeal, granting new …

Gathuru Mburu – Decolonizing Our Minds and Our Lands

Recolonization is happening. There is a second scramble, not just in Africa, but across the global South. Corporations started it. We need to name and shame these corporations – Monsanto, Syngenta, Cargill, and the program promoting them, AGRA [A Green Revolution for Africa] – to take this battle to the next level. The wars [of conquest of Africa] have not …