The TPP’s Corporatocracy by BART GRUZALSKI

It’s Friday morning and it seem certain that fast track will pass later today. The hype is that the vote is too close to call but that seems only to be hype. NAFTA was a squeaker. It’s hard to believe that this will be a one-vote squeaker. The Congressional passage of fast track for the TPP will announce to the …

Ignoring Reality, Subverting Morality: GMOs and the Neoliberal Apologists By Colin Todhunter

Monsanto is often called one of the most ‘evil’ companies on the planet. It has a history of knowingly contaminating the environment and food with various poisons, cover ups and criminality (see this, outlining the company’s appalling history). In recent times, there has been much focus on its promotion and patenting of GMOs, the deleterious impacts of its glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup and how …

Monsanto Now Billing Itself as a “Sustainable Agriculture Company” BY CHRISTINA SARICH

When you read headlines like these, you may be confused. Should you get angry, or laugh? Monsanto as a sustainable agriculture company? Monsanto truly has decided to market itself as a ‘sustainable agriculture’ company despite spending billions to provide the world with destructive, carcinogenic chemicals. You can see Monsanto’s propaganda piece here. The biotech giant also says that it aims to “empower” farmers around the world, …

Seeds of doubt: Monsanto never had Bt cotton patent – Shishir Arya & Snehlata Shrivastav

Fourteen years after US multinational Monsanto brought the genetically modified (GM) Bt Cotton (Bollgard) to India, there is no clarity on the discovery having ever been patented in the country. Clueless Indian farmers and seed manufacturers have paid crores as royalty to the company from 2002 until 2006, when the company came out with Bollgard 2, which was, incidentally, patented. …

Farmers Are Starting to Ditch GMO Soybeans – Christine Sarich

If a Roundup Ready variety of soybeans might cost $65 to $70 a bag, and conventional, non-GMO varieties are $30 to $35 a bag, you would think farmers would be eschewing GMO beans. An agronomist with the Division of Agriculture at the University of Arkansas is planting nine non-GM soybeans on his test plots, four developed by the University. Here’s …

The Truth Behind The USDA’s ‘Non-GMO Label’ Revealed – Christine Sarich

US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, also known as Monsanto’s errand boy, sent a letter to media outlets on May 1st of this year stating that the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) has, for a long time now, offered a Process Verified non-GMO label to food manufacturers. In the least, the claim has kicked up some dust to make understanding the …

Monsanto Ordered To Pay $93 Million For Poisoning Residents With Agent Orange

Earlier this month the State Supreme Court of West Virginia dealt a huge blow to the biotech company Monsanto, ordering it to pay $93 million to the small town of Nitro, West Virginia for poisoning local citizens with Agent Orange chemicals. Approved last year, the details were only recently worked out a few weeks ago as to how the funds would be …

The Dangers of Human Gene Editing – Ulson Gunnar

It is often said that if it can be imagined, it will inevitably be done. And such a sentiment could not be any truer in terms of applying genetic engineering and synthetic biology to the genomes of our planet’s organisms including humans themselves. While the process of synthesizing and arranging genetic code has many processes, perhaps none has been as …

Danish Authority Calls Glyphosate a Human Carcinogen – Christine Sarich

A Danish authority has now declared glyphosate a human carcinogen and says “don’t use it.” Will this declaration begin a rash of warnings from around the world? Monsanto may have asked the World Health Organization for a retraction when one of their agencies declared glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s best selling herbicide, Roundup, ‘probably carcinogenic,’ but they are going to have …

Rule By The Corporations: TTIP Corporate Empowerment Act – Paul Craig Roberts

The Transatlantic and Transpacific Trade and Investment Partnerships have nothing to do with free trade. “Free trade” is used as a disguise to hide the power these agreements give to corporations to use law suits to overturn sovereign laws of nations that regulate pollution, food safety, GMOs, and minimum wages. The first thing to understand is that these so-called “partnerships” …